Ringworm walleyes

[lakevet]

What are the details on ringworms for walleyes. Have used them for bass. Thought they would go good with kids and walleyes. Less baiting of hooks. Any advice on color, size, brand, rigging, retrieves, locations, time of year and water temps when they are good in clear northern MN lakes is appreciated.

Thanks

lakevet

[Mike Walerak]

Ringworms work best in river systems. The are a mainstay down on Pool 4 of the Mississippi River. There are only a handful of manufactures that make them. Most are from Luck E Strike. If you want to see some colors you can do a search on Hutch's Tackle. He has a bunch of colors on his HSOforum.

[zepman]

I use ringworms all the time in natural lakes. I generally will only fish them in 8ft. and under and I'm targeting weedclumps, edges etc.... Sometimes it's also good to just have a steady retrieve through and around weeds. Can't really say what's the go to color cause it changes all the time. Get a good variety and just let the fish tell you what they want. Great multi-species lure that will keep anyone busy in the boat.

[Tim_Anderson]

I used the ringworms from B-Fish-N Tackle last year pretty heavily. Like Mike said, they are very popular on the river systems, especially on the Mississippi down south. I used them on the Rainy last spring and did very well when the bite was really on. Jig and minnow would generally outfish on a slow bite.

I used them heavily last summer here in the Brainerd area as well. Did very well with them on Gull and Mille Lacs. Started with them on the opener, and used them through about the first of July (thats when I switch gears to fishing muskies the vast majority of the time).

You talked about kids, and my first thoughts were that this would not be an easy presentation for most kids. There is a lot of technique to presenting jigs and plastics properly. Sometimes it's horizontal. Sometimes it's vertical. Sometimes it's dragging it. Sometimes bites are very subtle. Many adults have problems with this! A kid would have to be a pretty sharp fisherman.

I like pink, chartreuse, and plain gray jig heads. I also use both natural colored ringworms and brighter stuff too. Pearl, chartreuse, blue, gold, and white. Sometimes you gotta mix it up.

Tough to beat the slip bobber and live bait for kids tho. JMO. Rapalas are great too.

[lakevet]

Thanks for the input. Got a starting point to work from. With 3 boys they can experiment. They like to try new techniques.

lakevet

[LMITOUT]

I used them while rip-jigging last spring and into summer and they did a pretty good job. I did better pitching jigs with Gulp Alive than with the ringworms, although I really didn't put a lot of time pitching them compared to the Gulp to say if one was better than another. I want to try them more this year but the Gulp was working too well to switch.