Fishing spinners for walleye is a time-tested tactic that is still a great fish catcher. Yet, as time progresses, new technologies in materials and electronics have elevated the game to a whole new level of efficiency.
In this video, full-time guide and tournament angler Colt Anderson joins Virtual Angling to break down his new school method for fishing spinners.
We catch up with Anderson on a flat, calm, hot day in mid-August, arguably one of the toughest times and conditions for walleye fishing. This time of year, walleye head to deeper offshore structures and tend to scatter more than school. For this, you need to cover water and keep your presentation in the strike zone for as long as possible. For Anderson, there is no better way to do that than to troll spinners. Before dropping lines, Anderson first looks for areas holding these small and scattered schools on the edge of deep humps. He does this by following contours with his 200hp mercury pushing forward but utilizes a sneaky trick to scan larger areas. Anderson has attached a Garmin LiveScop transducer to his transom mount Minn Kota Vantage trolling motor, which allows him to pan 270 degrees around the boat. This enables Anderson to look at the hump from all angles and affirm fish seen on side imaging to determine if there are enough fish in the area to target.
Once suitable amounts of walleye are located, Anderson custom rigs his spinners with a set of specific components. First, he ties a double hook crawler harness using two #6 octopus hooks attached via snell knot on a 3ft chunk of 15-pound fluorocarbon. Once the leader is created, Anderson’s go-to spinner is the XTackle Spin Bead. Anderson notes that when your zig-zagging across humps chasing fish, the Spin Beads stay up and continue to spin, unlike conventional metal blades. You might ask why not the deadly smiley blade over the spin bead, but the answer comes from Anderson’s years of experience with guide clients. While smiley blades work well, they tend to twist your line badly if your swivel becomes clogged with debris. These twists in the line can send your spinner in all different directions and make for an ugly presentation. The Spin beads are so inline and small that they completely resist getting bound up while spinning continuously. As mentioned, they also don’t sink to the bottom, especially with an inflated crawler—a major benefit over metal blades at slow speeds or inside turns.
Anderson uses a full crawler on his double-hooked snell. This helps combat greedy perch from removing all of your worm when dragging across a structure. When fish are being finicky, they often need time to commit. Whether that’s no time at all, like with reaction tactics, or a long time to follow and decide. Again, the beauty of a spinner is that it travels at slow speeds and stays in the strike zone for as long as you want it to. Anderson uses a 2-ounce bottom bouncer, a great average size for fishing various depths while consistently keeping the spinner near the bottom. At times, Anderson trolls down to .5mph, but in summer, they tend to like it rolling around 1.3mph with the walleye’s heated metabolism.
This unique spinner presentation combined with forward-facing sonar means you’re always on fish, significantly upping your odds of putting fish in the boat, even in the toughest conditions.
