Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Summertime walleye fishing throughout the area is really pretty simple.

Just fish them in shallow water. Or fish them in deep water.

Well, that’s not really the case but I did want to get your attention.

In lakes such as Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa, you’ll find a lot of walleyes in the weedbeds this time of year. Look for cabbage beds or mats of coontail on the flats and you can rest assured that walleyes will be taking advantage of this shade and cover and can be caught.

On the other hand, rest assured there will be plenty of walleyes cruising the main lake basin which in this lake bottoms out at about 22 feet or so. There will be no structure, just a flat, dishpan shaped muddy bottom for the most part.

In reservoirs such as Lake Francis Case, Lake Sharpe or Lewis and Clark Lake on the Missouri River system, walleyes will be scattered throughout flooded trees in the deeper Francis Case or cruising the old river channel in the shallower Sharpe and Lewis and Clark lakes. In these lakes you will need to get down to 30 feet or so to reach the fish.

There’s a method of fishing deep walleyes which has been growing in popularity the past few years. There are few walleye crankbaits that will dive to these depths, most bottom out at somewhere from 12 to 18 feet. There is, however, an easy method to take these crankbaits to the deeper walleyes where walleyes are cruising in July and August.

It’s called snap weight fishing. It involves attaching a heavy sinker in front of your crankbait by means of a line release similar to those used in deep water salmon fishing.

In a nutshell, here’s how it works.

Using a line counter reel spooled with 14/6 Fireline (a good choice for crankbait trolling) let your crankbait out 50 feet from the rod tip. Next, clip on the line release to which is attached a special lead weight. Next, count out more line from the reel. Engage the reel, place it in a rod holder and begin trolling 1.5 to 2.5 miles an hour.

The weight acts as a mini-downrigger ball. Let that weight down 25 feet, figure about 5 feet for the diving depth of your lure and you should be swimming that crankbait at about 30 feet.

The key word here is, “should be.”

There are a lot of variables involved which will determine just how deep your lure is really running.

Let’s look at some of them.

The weight attached to the line release is the major factor. Thing is, as you troll resistance of the lure and the line will cause the snap weight to ride out and up behind the boat. While a downrigger with a 10 pound weight will stay almost directly under your boat, a four-ounce weight attached to the line clip will not. If you are trolling the weight 30 feet down, it will probably extend more than 45 degrees behind straight down so that weight is considerably shallower than 30 feet.

That’s why you should use the largest weight you can get by with when trying to reach considerable depth. A six-ounce weight would not be out of line for depths of 30 feet or deeper.

Line diameter is another factor. The larger the diameter of your line, the more resistance it will have in the water column and the shallower both your lure and the snap weight will run. That’s why I recommend a superline such as Fireline. A 14/6 designation means this line has a breaking strength of 14 pounds, but is the same diameter of six-pound monfilament. No many of us would want to try trolling crankbaits on 6 pound test line. Too much stretch, too hard to hook fish and too light for a hard fight behind a moving boat.

Speed is the third factor. The slower you troll, the deeper your lure and snap weight will run. Increase that speed and the weight and lure will rise shallower.

Another factor is the diving ability of the lure. If it is a deep diver, it will, of course, dive deeper than a shallow diver. There are lure dive charts available to tell you just how deep many crank baits will run at a certain speed and line diameter, but as a general rule you can figure a deep diver such as a number 5 Shad Rap will dive about 5 feet on 50 feet of line and perhaps reach 12 on 120 feet of line.

What you should really do is troll your lure and snapweight over a flat to determine how deep the snap weight is when the lure begins to hit bottom. That will tell you how deep your lure is running below the snap weight at a certain speed. I usually do this at 2 mph and figure a slower speed will get the whole rig a little deeper and a faster speed will move it a little shallower.

You can buy snap weight kits and they come with a variety of sizes of weights. These will work well in shallow glacial lakes such as Spirit Lake, but the weights are not heavy enough for really deep trolling. The releases will work just fine, but obtain some dipsey sinkers in weights of from four to six ounces for deep water.

Unless you line release has a little pin in the middle of the rubber pads, below which you pinch on the line, you will find that the release, with the sinker attached, will sometimes fall off the line, especially if you are using super line which tends to be small diameter and slippery. To prevent that, attach a large snap swivel to the release ring which holds the sinker and close the snap over your line below the release. Now if it falls off it will slide down to the lure and you can retrieve it.

If you haven’t used snap weights before the information I’ve set down here should get you started. For a lot of fishermen, snap weights have replaced lead core, but not for me. I generally run lead core rods on the outside of the boat and two snap weight rods off the back end. Some days one produces better that the other for some reason.

For more information on snapweights fo to www.offshoretackle.com