When’s the best time to use minnows for summertime walleye fishing?
Minnesota fishing guide Brad Hawthorne shares a couple different situations where he puts away the other offerings and busts out jumbo-sized minnows.
Typically, I am going to be using minnows when the fish have told me that they prefer minnows over leeches or crawlers on spinners or while you are using rigging techniques; or if I find myself in a tournament situation or in a situation when I am on search of a big walleye.
For most of those eater sized walleyes, nightcrawlers and leeches seem to be the ticket during those mid summer months, but often the best way to target those twenty five inch plus sized walleyes is with large minnows anywhere from five to eight inches long.
A lot of those bigger walleyes are going to be feeding on Ciscos and other bait fish throughout the summer. They are capable and used to keying in on larger size baits.
That is why big minnows often produce those larger fish.
Now when you are using those larger minnows it is definitely going to be a quality over quantity situation. It’s not really the time of year were your going to get twenty bites.
It’s a tactic specifically used to target those bigger walleyes.
Thumbnail photo via Matt Addington.
