By: Mike Bohacz
By: Mike Bohacz
Perhaps the most underutilized tool available to walleye anglers today is the “spoon”. Each year talk is centered around the hottest new lures on the market, the newest and greatest color patterns and a miriad of other topics, all intended to entice fishermen and sell product. Now don’t get me wrong; we all enjoy looking through catalogs and scouring tackle shop shelves for that “magic lure”, the one that no one else has yet. There’s nothing wrong with this, we all enjoy shopping for something new, whether its a new model car or the latest craze in fishing tackle makes no difference.
Its the looking that’s so much fun but while we’re searching for that magic potion to fill our livewells, we often forget the old saying ,”The more things change, the more they remain the same”. So goes it with spoons . From the first time our ancestors fashioned a spoon from a piece of bone or clam shell until today, spoons remain the one standby of knowledgable anglers that continues to catch fish year after year. There’s virtually no fish swimming that can’t be caught on a spoon and walleyes are no exception.
If you were to question charter captains who rely on producing fish for their paying customers day in and day out, you’d find out that the common spoon is always included in their bag of tricks. However, as with many things in life, not all spoons are created equal !
While any discussion on fishing lures will quickly turn to color, the most important aspect of spoons is how they perform in the water. Whether you’re casting a spoon or trolling it, a spoon needs to travel through the water with a slow wobbling or rolling motion; add a little erattic motion and you have a winner. Seems simple doesn’t it, yet as basic as it may seem, we all to often fail to recognize the importance of lure action. If I had a choice between carrying a number of different colored spoons or a number of like colored spoons with different actions, I’d put my money on the ones with different actions.
If I had to venture out with a single spoon, my choice would be a Scorpion which is manufactured by Advanced Tackle in Boyne City, Michigan. Perhaps as important as the fact that they produce an outstand- ing walleye spoon in the Scorpion is the fact that Terry and Jean Weber are avid anglers so the evolution of the Scorpion and its big brother , the Stinger, was no accident. The Webers spent hundreds of hours on the water perfecting their design along with the input they received from fishermen field testing their spoon. While the Webers continue to produce a quality product, they remain open to suggestions for new color patterns and ways of further improving the Scorpion.
The spoon, in my estimation, is one of the most versitle lures avail- able, perhaps as versitle as the jig which has an undisputed reputation for its fish-catching ability.
For years walleye anglers held firm to the belief that walleyes were next to impossible to catch when the massive hatches of giant mayflies occured in the Great Lakes Region and many still do believing that there’s too much food in the water to compete with. In my case, I wait expectantly each year for the rafts of spent mayfly carcasses to appear on Lake Erie and Saginaw Bay. When I see this I know its time to break out my Scorpions with a hammered gold or copper finish. This particular lure is absolute dynamite during the mayfly hatches, most probably because its action and color resembles that of a wiggler swimming through the water while its large enough to stand out from the crowd so to speak.
Likewise, it hard to beat a purple/silver or lavendar/silver combin- ation wherever shad are the prevalent food source. The Scorpion is produced in a wide range of color combinations so you can experiment all you want until you discover your own secret weapon.
The single, most important factor that gives the Scorpion its versitil- ity is its ability to perform well at a wide range of retrieval/trolling speeds. With a little experimentation, the Scorpion can be made to mimic the undulating movements of a mayfly wiggler and with an increase in speed ,it resembles the darting action of a frightened baitfish. Add a split shot to the nose of the spoon and you have a great setup for verticle jigging.
No discussion involving fishing lures would be complete without talking about rigging. First and foremost, I always use a barrel swivel a few feet ahead of the spoon tto eliminate line twist. An added advantage of the barrel swivel is that should you encounter floating weeds, the weeds will usually collect at the swivel and not foul up the spoon’s action. Next, I attach a split ring to the spoon and tie my line to the split ring. As with any lure, the lighter the line the better the action that the spoon will have.
While walleye spoons can be used with downriggers, you cannot attach your line directly to the release clip since walleyes are notorious for inhaling a spoon and swimming along with it for great distances. There’s nothing more frustrating than trolling for several hundred yards over a hot looking area only to pull up your lures and find a walleye hanging on to each of them. To avoid this problem, let out the desired amount of line ( 30 to 50 feet will usually do ), loop a lightweight rubberband around your line and attach the rubber band to the release clip. Even this tactic is not completely fool proof so its important that you watch your rod tip for the telltale bobbing that occurs when a walleye swallows the lure and continues to swim forward with it. Try this tactic and you’ll be amazed by the size of fish that can inhale the spoon and not break the rubberband but with a little practice and patience, you’ll be able to detect even the lightest of perch bites.
My favorite method of rigginng spoons for trolling involves the use of Dipsey Divers. When rigging spoons with dipseys its best to tie your main line directly to the clip on the diver and your leader directly to the rear clip. A small barrel swivel can be added midway between the diver and the spoon. Again, I attach a split ring to the spoon. A good rule of thumb for leader length is to use a leader as long as the length of your fishing rod. I always use the smallest Dipsey Diver possible to get my lure down to the desired depth. Since I use 14# Fireline, I can usually work depths down to 25 feet with the mini-disks that come packaged in pairs.
I prefer the mini-disks because they allow me to present my spoons in a variety of ways. I can run two rods directly off the stern with slightly larger disks or off the sides of the boat while running a rod off each side using inline planer boards to spread them out to reach finicky fish. Even with the small minidisks I can run my spoons 20 feet down with about 28 feet of line out. Combining minidisks with inline boards allows me to troll my spoons almost directly below the boards which comes in handy when boat traffic is heavy. Likewise, with the spoons running directly below the boards, the boards will teeter-totter in the water if a small walleye or perch takes the spoon eliminating wasted time trying to decide if there is really a fish on or if its just your emagination.
Spoons can be used equally well with in-line weights or snap weight systems if you don’t mind the added amount of line out to reach the desired depth. There are times when small snap weights or in line weights will outproduce minidisks such as when walleyes are feeding near the surface under calm-water conditions . At times like this, even an in line board can scatter the fish unless a longer length of line is let out.
The next time you’re on the water chasing walleyes, give spoons a try and I’m certain that you’ll end up wondering why you haden’t used them before.
If you can’t find Scorpion Spoons at you favorite tackle shop, ask them to order them or if you wish, you can contact Terry or Jean Weber for information regarding your nearest dealer by writing or calling:
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