An Easy Solution to Blade Selections
No matter where you go to chase walleyes, the locals will have their favorite crawler harnesses. Clown, purple tiger, confusion, and pink panties to name a few. Combined they have little in common, individually they cover all the bases an angler might employ to catch walleye.
When you buy a harness or purchase blades to build your own, put the following blades on your shopping list.
- Chartruse
- Copper
- Silver
- White
- Gold
Looking at the list, most who fish Erie will say that gold and copper blades are no brainers. Older experienced anglers will say chartruse works pretty darn good too. Silver will not make too many Erie anglers turn their heads, and white blades probably won’t get a response at all.
Every one of the colors or metals mentioned are just the base colors of a blade. Now, it might make a lil’ more sense. Take white for an example, from Saginaw Bay down to the waters of Erie white blades are producing. White is the base color in Pink Panties, Frozen Toes, I Don’t Care, Bloody Nose and either Purple Descent or Erie Descent. It all makes sense when you consider that pink and white, or red and white have been popular choices in jigs or other types of lures for years and years.
Now look at chartruse based blades. Used in combination with green or orange, and all of a sudden lots of people will say those two color combinations have worked for decades. They continue to do so today. One of the best blades color patterns I have used this year is a Northland Chartruse/Orange Holographic blade.
Most Erie walleye fisherman have gold and copper blades or spoons in their arsenal. Silver is looked upon with disdain, but for those who don’t have at least one silver based blade on the other end of a rod while fishing Erie are missing out. Do not forsake those gold and copper blades, because they do produce. Up on Saginaw Bay, Michigan’s other walleye capitol, Silver blades rule with such color patterns as Clown, Watermelon and Confusion. Yes, Confusion, even those funky dots work on a silver blade and will catch fish up there.
The kicker is, they work down here too. All of them will work on the Upper Peninsula’s other walleye capitol, the Bays de Noc. If you have a combination of these five blades, in just about an color added to them, you will be able to catch fish on any of these Great Lake bodies of water.