There’s nothing wrong with cashing in on some eater-sized walleye, but if you want to consistently target larger walters, you need to change up your overall strategy. In this video, well-known MN guide Brad Hawthorne shares a few of his favorite ways to upsize your presentation and catch bigger walleye as a result.
Simple Strategy for Catching Big Walleye
A question I get a lot as a guide and a tournament angler is; how do I specifically target and catch big walleyes.
The answer is pretty simple, upsize your baits. For example say you’re in a tournament and you’re on a rig bite pulling live minnows. I just upsize my chubs are suckers to the biggest I can find . I rigged key points big fish areas with large minnows I’m going use eight nine inch chubs and suckers.
That type of thing and that will usually always work if you’re fishing an early season or late season tournament or if I just have a customer that wants to catch big fish.
It’s a great way to target big fish is rigging big minnows and that works from the shield lakes in Canada all the way down to Iowa. I mean it just works literally all over the country.
Now if you’re on a trolling bite targeting big walleyes the things to focus on are big baits and loud baits. Generally bigger baits equal bigger fish and louder baits equal bigger fish. There will be times we will actually be trolling number 8 Rippin Raps behind leadcore and its been a great big fish bait for us. Other baits to use are big husky jerks, big number nine Rapala’s, and any other big body baits you can troll.
When it comes to spinners, use the large sized Erie blades. Use those size 6, 7, or 8 blades in the same colors you were catching slot fish in and you will find yourself catching much larger fish. Those bigger blades give off more flash and a larger profile which allow you to target the biggest fish in the school.
That type of thing is always gonna catch bigger walleyes. Trolling bites use bigger baits on rig bites use bigger minnows and then for spinners quite simply use those erie blades those large sized erie blades.
Just upsize your baits and it will help your target and catch big walleyes.
