Mike Gofron’s top three techniques to boat walleyes
Plus: ‘Rigging essentials’ sidebar.
Have you ever wondered what one of the top guns in professional walleye fishing likes to use when it comes to consistently putting walleyes in his boat? Like most anglers, you probably have. So pay attention. Lund pro Mike Gofron of Antioch, Ill., the runner-up at the 2002 Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Championship, has a basic game plan of go-to approaches that has kept him at the top of the walleye-tournament game for many years.
“I prefer to use a simple approach whenever possible,” Gofron said. “When I stick to the basics, I usually can catch plenty of walleyes.”
Gofron’s top three techniques for consistently putting walleyes in the boat are pitching jigs, pulling spinners on bottom bouncers and live-bait rigging.
Pitching jigs
Pitching jigs for walleyes has nothing to do with flipping sticks and 25-pound-test line. No, pitching jigs for walleyes requires fairly light line in the 4- to 8-pound range and jigs ranging from 1/16 to 1/2 ounce, although most of the jigs tend to be in the 1/8- to 1/4-ounce range.
“You just never know what size fish you are going to catch,” said Gofron of pitching jigs. “I find it to be a very productive technique for locating active fish and for catching a lot of them without having all of the extra gear involved with some of the other methods used by walleye anglers.”
Gofron suggests that you pick a piece of structure like a steep rocky breakline, a flat with a breakline, bridge pilings or the edge of a weedbed and pitch a jig either up on the flat or along the edge of the structure.
When fishing a river or reservoir where there is current, he recommends that you make a quartering cast and work your jig with the current.
“You will want to walk the bait along the bottom with a lift-and-drop retrieve,” Gofron said. “Look for areas where fast and slow current meet. You will want to pitch your jig into the slower water and work it toward the faster water. The walleyes are usually waiting to nail your jig just as it enters the faster water.”
Gofron suggests pitching jigs anywhere walleyes live but finds pitching jigs to be exceptionally productive when fishing the Dakota reservoirs. It’s also his top pick for hooking a hog.
“There may be other methods that are more productive for catching numbers of fish,” he said, “but in the spring when the big females are up in the shallows, pitching a jig and bait is my top method for catching big fish, whether you are in a western reservoir, river or natural lake.”
Pulling spinners
When he talks about pulling spinners, Gofron is talking about pulling them with his trolling motor behind a bottom bouncer and not behind a planer board.
He suggests mastering the use of two rods at once while using your trolling motor to pull your offerings along the edge of a weedbed.
“When trolling bottom bouncers and spinners, it seems to me that the bottom bouncers really stir things up and will often trigger walleyes into biting,” said Gofron, who prefers this technique when fishing reservoirs and lakes. “For this reason, make sure you troll the bottom bouncer and spinner into the thinnest part of the weedbed to stir things up a bit.”
Gofron suggests using bottom bouncers ranging from 3/4 to 1 ounce. If there are two anglers in your boat, have the angler in the front of the boat use the 1-ounce weights and the angler in the back use the 3/4-ounce weights. This will help prevent tangling and will cover more of the water column.
Make sure that you use smaller blades when pulling spinners with your trolling motor.
“I suggest using a size-three blade when using this method of trolling with spinners,” Gofron said. “Because of the heavy vibration, the normal size-five blades that anglers use when pulling boards are pretty tough to pull when you are holding your rods all day. The size-three blades are very effective for this method.”
Live-bait rigging
Live-bait rigs, which involve a slip-sinker, swivel, header and a hook, are about as basic as it gets when it comes to fishing for walleyes, but this building-block technique is an essential part of Gofron’s arsenal and yours if you intend to take your walleye fishing to the next level.
“I used live-bait rigging methods to take second at the 2002 RCL championship,” Gofron said. “I use live-bait rigging with minnows, leeches and night crawlers throughout my tournament-fishing season. It is very easy to learn the basics, and it is very effective.”
An essential quality for live-bait rigging success is a keen ability to pay attention to how walleyes are taking your bait. Detecting a strike is not very difficult – a tap-tap or a slight pull are typical hits – but deciding how long to allow a walleye to take your bait is something you need to experiment with each time you are on the water.
According to Gofron, rigging is effective on most bodies of water. “I have caught fish using live-bait rigs on reservoirs in water as deep as 60 feet,” Gofron said. “I have also had success using them in water only a few feet deep, like in the Mississippi River. Rigging is a very versatile technique.”
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