Are you are one of those types who likes to run spoons with your cranks and harnesses for walleye? Are you just running spoons because you do not want to get your precious boat dirty while dealing with crawlers? Well it doesn’t matter if you like to maximumize your trolling experience with different tactics or if you just don’t like drowing worms to get your limit. Either way you are going to have to tie up some leads from your weight or diver to the spoon.
You can either do that on the boat on the fly, or you can tie up one before the morning trip and leave it on the rod over night, or you can make up quite a few and have them ready on the fly. Tying on the boat can be difficult at worse considering the conditions on the water, at best you could be wasting valuable time while on a hot bite. Doing your homework the night before is ok, you save on time while on the water, but you still get limited by that one leader being on the rod.
Now take a half hour or so out of a precious night where there is nothing on the tube worth watching, you know the shows I am talking about, brain dead reality TV. Ugh! Gather these few items (15 or 20 lb Trilene Big Game or Vanish FC, some barrel swivels, 30 lb snaps, some toothpicks and line snips) and while the wife and kids are busy dialing in to vote for some off-key knucklehead, get to work.
Forgot one key thing up above. If you remember some of last year’s posts, I used those long foam pool noodles that I cut into sections to store my crawler harnesses. This really is the same concept. Fill up a 12 or 15 inch or so section of foam noodle, by taking roughly a 3 or 4 ft section of line, then attaching a swivel and snap at the opposite ends. Then run a toothpick through the swivel end, wrap around the noodle, and then finally finish up by running another toothpick through the snap to secure to the noodle. You can use a whole toothpick or just break them in half, it really matters only when looking at the size of the noodle. For your four and five inch noodles use a whole one. For those about the size of pipe insulation, use the halves.
You can use an improved clinch knot or in my case, a double loop knot to secure the swivel and snap at the ends. Why not just run a loop knot at one end, and use a snap-n-swivel at the other? You can, and it will prevent line twist too. But my goal was to minimize the sight distraction at the top of the spoon, walleyes have great vision, and sometimes they do get a little bit spooky. My snaps are Berkley Cross-Loks, and while they are tested out to 30 lb break strength, they offer an extremely small profile.
The reason I like to have many of them made up, is the same as why I like to tie up my own harnesses. Both rigs are throw aways, by this meaning after a good day on the water, one good fish, several fish in a short time, or just a slip of the pliers that nicks the line, that rig is done, never to be used again. Rather than lose a fish that day, or the next time out, take the time to get it done ahead of time, you lose nothing but a reality show induced headache and a little time.
SALMON NOTE
The same concept can be applied to salmon fishing with flies and spoons behind flashers. Crank up the line weight to somewhere in the 30 to 50 lb range though. You want the line to be fairly stiff so that the action of the flasher is transferred back to the bait, using a limper line does not work near as well, besides risking losing a big fish.
