How to Troll for Walleye Like a PRO!

hooked up right there [Music] there we go there we go look at that walleye right there man is that the way you want to do it open water season [Music] what is going on guys today we are back with another video and it is another beautiful summer day out here it's late afternoon right now um and uh yeah i'm not super happy that this is when i'm starting the day but uh it is just how it is from when you got to edit super late and then get up super early and do some more editing you don't always get out here super early in the day but um today's video i actually did a video like a year ago that was called how to jig walleyes like a pro and uh today we're doing the other video which is how to troll walleyes like a pro and uh we're gonna you know we do a ton of trolling videos on this channel we do a ton of everything videos on this channel i guess as far as walleye fishing goes but um we don't want to over complicate things and seem like every video is just way over people's heads so if you ever had a video if you ever wanted a video i like exactly how we're trolling exactly how to run your spread how to pattern fish the terminal tackle you need on the rods reels everything like that you need this is going to be a great video so if you never trolled for walleyes in your life you should be able to watch this video and get a pretty good grasp or if you just have a little bit of walleye trolling experience and you kind of want to you know up your game a little bit this should be a phenomenal video so we're hoping to catch a few walleyes but we're really hoping to take a deep dive kind of into exactly um you know situationally how you can catch more walleyes trolling and that's exactly what this video is about so um without further ado we're getting the trolling water down getting the minn kota going in this video i feel like this video could be an hour long of just me sitting in this chair right here talking about how to troll walleyes because there's just you know there's just so much to talk about i guess but uh maybe i'm just weird but uh yeah we're gonna get trolling we're gonna set some lines up hopefully catch a few walleyes and talk all about trolling 101. [Music] [Music] wow look at that [Music] wow look at that that fish came up bit touched it missed him and he came back and bit again wow look at that right there we're sitting in 48 feet right now fishing about 25 down and when you're out here they're likely gonna be good ones and this one you can just already tell i got about 120 feet of line out on a one ouncer here one ounce weight oh man i there's just there's no fish that's more finicky or rewarding to catch in my opinion and these fish that just own roam open water for much of their life and a lot of times they're the biggest fish in the lake and we got a good one on and trollins a lot of times the only way to get at them and the wind is trolling the best open water on days that look like this high skies sunny and a little bit of wind in the mix and a lot of times these are the worst days to fish structures so i do an a ton of trolling in the in the summer months as probably a lot of walleye anglers do and a lot of times it's the most effective tool in your box this time of year trolling is kind of situational a lot of other times of year in my opinion but man this time of year fish out in deep water kind of peak summer heat get the planer boards out get your spinner eggs get your cranks get your trolling rods and start pulling the basin because this is just absolutely the time to do it here i'm going to collapse my rod down so it's a little bit easier for me to net this guy when he pops up right next to the boat here we are 50 feet straight down right now the other best part about basin fishing there's nobody out here doing it it feels like you got the lake to yourself because everybody else is like you know on their favorite little rock bar [Music] and here we go this is you got all these other guys buzzing around going rock come to rock hump where the fish are a lot of times very negative in the middle of the day then you get out here over the basin they are just some studs and a lot of times they're more active all right 35 back it's going pretty much pretty much straight down here which is always a good sign and get my net ready to go take your time absolutely crucial when you're trolling slow you guys are probably looking at this like wow tom this is the most boring video i've ever seen in my life but you just got trust me you got to go slow on these guys keep that rod loaded let them fight themselves out and this fish is coming in 10 feet down now to my bouncer oh man i can just tell you from the angle of this line that it's gonna be a big fish all right here's my bouncer oh it's a stud it is exactly what we're after you guys probably got a really bad glare here these are hooked right in the back hook there we go man trolling when you dial it in there's really very few techniques so you can cover as much water with and be as effective and in the middle of summer just flat out catch big fish and that is just exactly the one of the fish we're after right there he's got like a deformed eye on one side that's probably why he came back the second time he's like i'm not sure what that thing is we'll go bite it again [Music] that one is just on a tiny little butterfly blade and uh he got it hooked pretty good though we'll just grab our players real quick pop them off and we'll be back in business here there we go look at that walleye right there man is that the way you want to do it open water season and uh look at that he's got kind of a deformed eye on one side but obviously he's having no problem eating as he's nice thick and beefy and we're gonna let this guy go right away and hopefully do it again i mean that is just you know exactly how you want open water trolling to go summertime trolling one of my absolute favorite patterns every year you know if you could oh my gosh no way right there oh and just as i'm saying it i just literally looked out at that board and started going back man oh man oh man right on cue just let that fish go now the pressure's on now the pressure's on we got to get two in a row here [Music] man just unbelievable unbelievable we got to do a little redirection here and we're going to go all into some tips you can use with your minn kota and with your i pilot remote they're gonna make this whole process much easier for you because uh when you're out by yourself or when you're out with buddies running a ton of rods it's kind of a daunting task to get where you wanna go keep the speed you want to go and catch and land fish all at the same time very effective you know on a lot of you know a lot of great lakes fishermen really big water fishermen you know do a lot of trolling i do more trolling than anything in the middle of summer on a lot of these lakes that are 1500 acres 3 000 acres 5 000 acres these inland lakes yeah i think people have this misconception that the big planer board spreads are you know kind of exclusively meant for the great lakes where you come out here and it's like just the untapped mass of fish that does not get harassed for the summer time frame and a lot of these fish you know a lot like muskies or other kind of big fish they spend a lot of their life out over basin you know there's certain fish a lot of times it's the adults that all end up out here [Music] oh we lost them too much pressure well there it is we'll get it set back up get another one but it's cool to see anyways and that was going to be another equally big fish so whenever you're trolling whether it's one rod two rods three rods six rods nine rods kind of no matter how many how many rods you're gonna troll your equipment is very important what rods you're using all those things matter you know whenever i'm trolling i like the line counters obviously because that gives you the ability to duplicate things and without you know duplicating and repeating the process is kind of what catches you more fish when you're trolling but um also i'll kind of list the rods that i use and i love them i've been using them the whole season now and a little bit last year even and you know look for rods that you know if you guys want to buy these rods great if you don't want to look for rods with the same characteristics you know that are in a price point that and that you know that you are comfortable with and uh the rods i'm fishing with are the 2b fishing genesis trolling rods and they come in three lengths and one of them right here this is the short one and i do not have this one out today this is like an inside rod you could put a planer board on if you want but most of the time this is going to be like an inside rod so if i had another person with me and we were going to run six the short five foot three rod would go right in this holder right here and this is always going to be your farthest back it's always going to be the closest bait to the boat is this little short rod it's great on lead core or like i said a lot of times i'll use it on a bottom bouncer or a crank bait and just stick it right down right there it keeps the spread really clean generally what you want to do is work out your farthest out rod you want on your longest rod you're farthest back and closest to the boat rod um you want to be your shortest rod so that's kind of where this 5 3 fits in for me most time there's not a planer board on it i run it as a down rod very close to the boat and it keeps my spread running nice and clean now the second rod out is normally and this is the number one rod i use it's an eight foot six telescopic rod by two brothers and uh same company same brand everything and it folds down like this for eight six and i can fit nine of these in my side rod box so i can put a whole bunch of these in there and you know they probably fold down to about six feet they're pretty short when you fold them down which is awesome and these rods are probably the most common one if you're going to pick up some trolling rods or get into trolling this is kind of the size you want and every trolling rod is going to have kind of the same build at least a good trolling rod what you're going to have especially on a planer board rod is you need a little bit of meat to it because you need that thing to be able to hold that board rods that are too flimsy when you're trolling what will happen is they'll just be way bent over right when you put the board on and you start trolling because the boards obviously do have pull and you know too spongy of a rod that thing's gonna be doubled over it's going to be way too flimsy so you need a very soft tip on these rods right which these have a soft tip that kind of loads that thing up and the fish can load it up when you're fighting the fish it's got a softer slower kind of midsection but it's got plenty of weight to kind of hold this thing now trolling's a lot like fishing like jerk baits or anytime you're doing this kind of crankbait or spinner pattern where you have a lot of line out i generally like this to use mono on these rods to give it a little bit more stretch and the rod is softer too it's meant to absorb that most of the controlling rods are composite or glass and that's kind of what you look for it's a slower action and they're meant to load up a lot when you're fighting those fish and that's absolutely key so this 86 is generally my number one planer board rod you can also run it as a down rod it's kind of probably the most useful one that fits a ton of different applications now the other one which i fish a ton this is always my farthest outside rod and this is an 11 and a half foot two piece rod so i can still fit it in my boat and everything like that and this is the long one that goes outside and the reason i like this on my farthest out planer board or my farthest out down rod is because it gets it very far away from the boat number one and my line angle is up above all my other middle board rod lines so it gets the line way up and the line does not get bogged down in the waves if you're going to run a board way outside like in bigger waves and if you try to run a planer board super far away in waves with a shorter rod what ends up happening is the waves actually come up over the line and it makes your spread kind of slide backwards and it's just not as clean so that 11 6 is my farthest outside rod now we'll throw up a screen or another video right here now a lot of times i'll do down rod trolling running like six down rods and basically i'll do the same thing that eleven and a half foot on the outside eight and a half's in the middle and that five foot is right down the back and this keeps my spread super clean so i don't even need planer boards in situations where i'm like trolling a weed line or something like that where i'm trying to keep baits very specifically in a design situation so you know running your trolling spread has a lot to do with the rods you always want to be especially if you're running multiple rod stacking lines like this shortest mid length and then longest rod right on the tip this is how i fish you know whenever i'm trolling especially in wisconsin where i get multiple lines i'm almost always setting it up like this and it keeps my spread clean and ultimately i catch more fish [Music] hooked up right there well i actually just missed one on a different board just didn't hook up man dude this thing is going ballistic here what is this that thing is really dogging i got my gopro cord unplugged we just got kind of ultimate chaos right now and i know my gopro's gonna die it's enough to fight the fish and then you gotta fight like the filming stuff on top of it we'll just get this plugged in like that i think we should be going now i think we can officially reel this fish in oh we might have the gopro die while we're fighting this one i was literally uh on the outside and we must have gone through kind of a pack of them there because like you saw it had uh first the inside board go off which was a little bit closer and then uh the outside board came by that same wolf pack and got launched back again and this is definitely going to be a nice fish i mean it just tanked that board a lot of times you can kind of tell you got a nicer one when they just really dig back and then kind of keep going and pull a little drag right off the bat this is on my long outside rod it's just a nice slow steady process get the board on clip by yourself just kind of start walking away from them there we go we got them on too awesome i think there's a butterfly blade on this one and uh kind of your your standard kind of double crawler rig oh my gosh dude is this thing running what is this all we've been catching down here all week's been walleyes i'd be shocked if this was anything else but man is it is it pulling man dude this is just these trolling battles are just like so dicey because you know they can just be hooked however when you're running some of the smaller stuff [Music] all right there's my bouncer oh yeah it's got to just be a stud i can see him down there oh dude really nice fish here really super super thick one all right all right i know we got the long rod here buddy we're just going to take our time with you i'm going to pop you up kind of over here [Music] oh oh oh [Music] oh we got him there we go man is that a stud is that a stutter what man dude that fish is heavy heavy heavy and anytime you're fishing these into the lakes and you're constantly getting like 24 to 27s you are 100 on the right fish and this one has been eaten good and you guys can probably see this rig here little tiny butterfly blade slow death hook and then i do got a trailer little octopus hook on this one for kind of running that running that whole crawler man dude is that oh settle down buddy is that a nice fish or what the sun angle's all wrong but i don't even care i mean that is a tall one right there just built anytime you put your hand across and they're that wide super super nice healthy fish let's let that guy go wow is that a good one [Music] there we go another stud just let them go super nice clean fish and man that is just how effective trolling can be this time of year all right well another big thing when you're thinking about trolling is trolling is ultimately about patterning you know patterning when you're jig fishing or slip bobbering it takes a lot of the variety out it'd kind of be like patterning your whole boat you know if you let's imagine you had five guys in your boat and you guys were all jig fishing one guy starts catching all the fish and all five people have different baits on do all five people leave different baits on or do they switch to the thing that the fish are biting the most same principle applies when you're trolling you know i have three rods out we're in wisconsin today we're trolling three lines and uh i'm trying to pattern the fish it's just like having three people in the boat if i have one rod that keeps going off over and over there's a couple different variables which we got to look at when we're doing something like that how much line are you letting out what kind of depth are you trying to achieve whether you're fishing with a crankbait or a piece of lead and a bottom or like a bottom bounce or a spinner rig or a snap weight or really no matter what you're fishing um you got to think about how much line you have out and when you're trolling the amount of line from the tip of your rod to the player board that doesn't has nothing to do with it it's how much line you have out past the you know from the planer board to your hook that is the amount of depth you are achieving so that's number one how much line you have out how deep is that bait running you know if we have a spinner rig at 100 feet back and then 80 feet back and 70 feet back and the one at 100 keeps going off over and over well then it's kind of a no-brainer to switch the other two to 100 feet or maybe go like you know 105 and 95 and get right in that zone where those fish are biting the next thing is obviously lure you know if you're fishing crank bait and uh you know you got a multitude of crankbaits on and one crankbait keeps catching all the fish switch to more things like that or more colors like that spinner rigs same type of thing and a lot of these lakes will get the fish will get very very like touch and go on colors a color or a certain blade type might make a huge difference and uh you know today it seems like it's mostly these butterfly blades for the most part of these smiley blades something that you can move very very slowly and then i have a slow death hook on there a couple of purple beads and then a stinger hook on there and that's kind of seeming like the best rig for today now the other thing is speed that which you can think about yes your boat you might set your cruise control on your trolling motor and 1.2 or 1.3 now especially when you're running boards like this and you have a wide spread the little bit of turn like this will slow one side down and speed one side up so if you know the three times which i let's say say the last three bites i've had i've been on a turn and my boat's been going like this well my boards on the left side when i'm making a left turn are gonna be those baits are going to be slowing down and uh i'm just moving at a lower speed and a lot of times you know that's how you can kind of dictate how fast those fish want today very slow my first two bites i was turning at the side the fish bit on and lo and behold the boards went back so i slowed my speed way down today and i'm going much slower because that's the other variable right you got kind of lure depth in the water and then speed those are kind of the three main variables that a lot of times will dictate your success now when you kind of match all three of those things then you can imagine it's just now that you have one guy fishing the right thing then you have three guys in the boat all fishing the right way and it makes you a hundred times more efficient so trolling is all about patterning you know we basically have like i said three lines going here and in a state which allows three lines um it makes that a lot more easy to kind of pattern these fish on exactly what they're biting and kind of make those small tweaks so i get all three of my rods fishing versus you know basically just trolling around with one rod at a time where you'd have to kind of cycle through and uh you know your other two lines would be worthless if uh you know you just had the wrong thing on the whole day so like i said trolling is all about patterning speed lure and depth and those are kind of the main things that are going to determine your success and then duplicating that on every single rod in the boat and that's kind of the secret to catching more fish trolling big big big oh man did that one just tank it i actually just let a little one go i don't even think we're gonna record or put that one in the video but this one if we land it'll make the video that board got throttled back and it seems like they want it really slow today so i just hammered on them right away and just cranked that real real fast to kind of tighten them up and set that hook a little bit better [Music] my gosh dude i caught that last one of the board was just like ah kind of sort of going back and i was like what is up with that i figured it's a small smallmouth or something that's so out of place for what we've been catching out here this one's right though this one's a hundred percent the right variety base and trolling most time you don't want to be right in those fish you want to be up above them i'm going way up on the seat for this one come here buddy i'm just going to pop you off real quick nice and easy load that rod way up kind of walk forward when we take the board off there we go now we are tight lined to the fish here out here all by myself today out in the middle of the lake we're sitting in 54 feet of water and they are just snapping now one question we get a lot on youtube is like you're in 54 water aren't the fish dying when you bring them up well they're not on the bottom for one most these fish are about 25 down and on top of that this kind of fight now if you had a fish that was like 30 feet down and you were jig fishing you just cranked them up as fast you could that's a lot worse for these fish when they especially the bigger ones they just fight themselves out like this and it's this slow gradual process up they are super healthy and no need to worry about those ones all right buddy 18 feet back we got to get the net he's really dogging right now come on 12 feet nice and easy this is just gonna be i just absolutely love this when you're on these patterns they're just almost exclusively big fish like this we're gonna see the bouncer here in a second yeah bouncer's right there [Music] all right i did grab that other line which i'm not super thrilled about but just kind of happens sometimes it's not actually as big as i thought he was going to be he's a nice one though oh yeah there we go in the bag right there just gonna leave him in the water for a second unhook him come here buddy believe it or not it's actually the smallest one of the afternoon but still a really nice fish and there we go i just kind of looped those lines to clear that one and uh totally untangled now all right come here buddy let's take a look at you not as big as i thought he was gonna be but he really put up a fight there we go look at that beautiful basin walleyes on the troll such a just an incredibly effective way to catch these fish this time of year and uh all quality and you can't complain about those guys all right well another big thing and probably one of the most important things that should be in every single video that goes unmentioned is boat control you know boat control is ultimately what's gonna catch you fish when you're trolling and uh really you know almost any time you're walleye fishing and there's probably very few fish that are more boat control oriented than walleyes they're just so specific and uh yeah a lot of times i always say i think walleye fishing will make you a better fisherman for everything else but ultimately because of boat control i'm paying attention to a lot of the little things but you know it all depends like i said you know you are ultimately generally trying to maintain a speed and a direction that ultimately dictates what your baits are doing so you know boat control is incredibly important when you're fishing this way if you're going way too fast with these you know spinner rigs and bottom bouncers they're going to come super high in the water column and they're not going to be around those fish too slow and they're going to be down below it similarly with crank baits there's a lot of days we're going a certain speed where the crank bait is much more effective than going a different speed then you add wind on top of that and then it all becomes more complicated again so bolt control is incredibly important now like i said they were pulling spinner rigs and spinner rigs are generally pulled at a slower speed than crankbaits we're going like a mile an hour today and um [Music] most of this is achievable with the bowel mount just with the minn kota we get a ton of youtube questions why don't you ever use your kicker well we've been doing so much trolling with spinner eggs and it's been so calm out i feel like a lot of days this summer there's been no need to right i can keep my minn kota on like speed three and it's gonna put me around all day long you know at this speed now if i got into some big win and i was still trying to go at a really slow speed i would use the kicker basically what i would do is just trim it down and kickers are obviously great because you can achieve a much slower speed with them than you could with your big motor trim that down fire it up i would just engage it enough to kind of get me going the speed i want then i use my trolling motor to dictate my direction in which i want to go now if you're pulling crank baits generally you're going a lot faster and uh because of that the kicker would almost always come into play in that scenario when you're trying to hit speeds of like you know two miles an hour two and a half miles an hour it's gonna be tough to keep the troll motor going all day long on like a 12 15 hour day at that speed without some thrust from behind right and that's kind of where the kicker ultimately comes into play now another great thing uh with a lot of newer motors whether that's a suzuki or you know a lot of your four strokes especially in the lower rpms am i on the suzuki 90 and i absolutely love these two motors they have rpm adjusters on them so if i'm trying to pull crankbaits and let's say i don't have a kicker a lot of times what i could do is just turn it on and and up you know go up or down with my rpm adjustments that's going to go in small increments so you could really tweak that a lot you know if you're going to go fast just leave it in gear and go up a few rpm notches if you want to go down a little bit you know go down a little bit and hit the down button right here and you guys can probably so i'll kind of go up for a second and you'll hear it engage i don't know if you can do it in neutral though now we got to put it in gear so that's the sound it'll make it'll beep at you when you go up or down there's up another increment of rpms and adjusts very slowly so you can really kind of tweak that in a lot like that if you don't have a kicker now with the kicker it's just a simple matter of you know slowly engaging that throttle and you're going to have a lot more kind of variation that speed with the kicker so bowl control hugely important now a lot of times when i'm trolling you know anything where i have the trolling motor down which is most things i'm going to troll there's two features with the mccoys with your ipilot remote you can use one you could there's a setting where you could follow a track which i'm not going to go too much into that today we'll go into that on another day very handy feature um but the big one here is one is called autopilot and the symbol is going to look i don't even know if we can get it on here i'll try to find one it's an n with an arrow and that is called autopilot and what that's going to do i'll turn that on and uh you know the touch screen ones you just touch it or you can just hit it on the ones that are still a button and that's going to keep your heading so that's going to keep you dialed on a heading so something like this where i'm open water trolling and i'm just going you know generally in a very straight line one direction or another basically all i got to do is hit that and then i'm you know i'm going that direction right i can mess around with my rods or do whatever now the other big thing is speed and there's a setting on here called cruise control i can set that so a lot of times let's say i want to hold it like 1 4. i'll dial that to 1.4 miles an hour now i have my direction and my speed accounted for i can sit over here and mess with rods and catch a fish and go over here and set a planer board out and i still know i'm on the right track and i still know i'm going the same speed if every time you catch a fish like let's say you're trolling through like open water like this where you might go 100 yards and there's nothing and then you get in this big wolf pack of fish which happens a lot you know if every time you go to land a fish you're taking you're off the troll motor you're off your course you're not where you want to be anymore that's you know takes away your opportunity to double up or catch multiple fish at the end of the day that's a lot of fish that you catch right when you get in those wolf packs so bowl control is huge when you're trolling it's really huge in a lot of ways when you're walleye fishing it's one of the many reasons i love having a tiller but you know pay super close attention to those things that you know next time you're out trolling you guys are going to catch a lot more fish all right well that is going to do it for today's video hopefully you guys enjoyed watching this one i'm gonna take the cameras down which is always a good feeling and troll probably into the late evening hours and just have a little fun trying to mix things up but i appreciate you guys watching this video i know there's just a million things we didn't go on to into like lead core snap way just a whole just a million different things when neutral spinners winning troll cranks this video was meant to be more basic than that it was meant to be how you troll and uh you know a lot of the the hardcore things that mattered kind of no matter what you're trolling and so hopefully that that point kind of came across and hopefully a lot of you guys who you know had a lot of questions on this have a much better grasp on what we're doing trolling's an unbelievably effective way to catch walleyes really no matter where you are and uh you know the summer is obviously a great time to troll there's great spring trolling opportunities a great fall trolling opportunities it's all kind of specific to where you go maybe we'll do a video on when is the right time to troll in the future but like i said hopefully you guys enjoyed watching this caught a few fish talked a whole bunch about trolling application stuff and uh yeah i appreciate you guys watching if you guys are not yet please subscribe to this channel stay tuned for more content and we'll see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: Tom Boley

Views: 40,741

Rating: 4.9206939 out of 5

Keywords: walleye fishing videos, walleye fishing tips, walleye fishing lures, summer walleye fishing, how to catch walleyes in the summer, best walleye fishing videos, Tom Boley, how to catch walleyes, how to find walleyes, walleye fishing in the weeds, big walleye fishing, trolling for walleye, spinner rig walleyes, Wisconsin walleyes fishing, Minnesota walleye fishing, humminbird side imaging walleyes, spinner rigs walleye, slow death hook walleye, Hard to soft bottom

Id: nwlo5IzsorI

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021