A couple days ago, my fishing partner and i were going to head up the the river for walleyes. We loaded everything up and went to the baitshop for minnows. They were closed. We also went to the small engine shop that sells some fishing stuff, including live bait. They were also closed. We went to the hardware store, they were all out. Anyways, we had no minnows and a perfectly good 20 degree snowy windy day to fish. So we went to the river under the dam, where it is almost slack water. We have never caught walleyes on artificials before and were half heartily throwing some plastics. I was using a 4" curl tail grub in black/purple. Anyways, on about my 5th cast, i got a snag and started pulling. I could move it towards me and figured i snagged some old line on the bottom of the river. I was pulling really hard, and a couple of rod pumps in, the snag moved. It came to life. I was shaking because i was using a medium heavy 7' rod and i could bareley move this thing. It came out to be a walleye, that i estimated close to 10 lbs, maybe a little less. The thing is, as i was about 3 net lenghts from shore, it broke my 6 lb. line!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! For those of you who havent seen it, a 10 lb walleye is a truly majestic sight. Within around 1 hour, me and my buddy hooked and lost (since we couldnt feel a thing, we were frozen!) about a dozen more fish, mostly walleyes. I caught one keeper and he caught a freshwater drum. After a while the bite stopped. Anyways, i learned that plastics can perform drastically better than minnows. There were 3 other people using minnows not 10 yards in each direction, and none of them had a bite. Im heading out next weekend with a box full of grubs and jigheads!

There is an old fisherman's saying that goes something like this: "Fish that get away immediately double in size."

Good luck on your next outing, I hope you catch the "Big One." If you are looking for a couple of suggestions: Don't upsize your line diameter, walley can be VERY line shy. Buy some Yo-Zuri Ultra Soft #6 (11.9 lb test). Set your drag, CALIBRATED BY SCALE, to 4 lbs. You have plenty of rod for walley, be patient, these fish don't fight very hard and tire out quickly.

p.s. A true 6 lb test line is too light for a MH rod. That is NOT a balanced package.

I didnt mean medium heavy as in MH, i meant medium, M. I guess i should have said medium weight rod, or something like that.

Thats insaane! lol at least you now have some confidence in your artificials!  

Im heading out next weekend with a box full of grubs and jigheads!

Good luck. Grubs on jigheads, along with crankbaits, are one of the best lures, in my personal experience.

Never had any luck with crankbaits. I did catch a sauger on a wally diver on lake kabetogama in MN. Sauger look much cooler than walleyes btw. Another hot lure for me was an orange paddle tail (walleye assasin) on a heavy jighead.

I fished Lake Erie for Walleye this past summer. We trolled Storm Hot-N-Tots all 5 days and limited out every day.

I use only artificial lures for walleye. Generally, I use plastic during the day and stickbaits during the night. My best silicon producers have been single tail grubs (3 and 4)  Berkley and Kalin's. My best stickbait producers have been LC Slender Pointer (4), Daiwa minnows and Megabass ITO 110 (Original and Husky Rapala were the best producer in the past).  

As Roadwarrior mentioned, walleyes are generally line shy and finicky. It is important to keep line diameter to minimum (I stay under 0.25mm) and use clear line (or least visible line). In my experience walleye prefer STEADY and SLOW retrieve 90% of the time. Walleye also can be very sensitive to bumping around boat, rumbling rocks on the shore (or in the water) and excessive tackle noise (use bail manually).

For walleye fishing the key words are: stealth, quiet, slow, finesse .    

Most of the time you will be more successful if using live bait, but there is still plenty of days when you will do better with lures.

Have not done so well recently with the walleyes but in quite a few years I could have made a living off of plastics and river walleyes. What always seemed to work well near deep edges during the winter months were 3/8 oz jigheads with either small reaper tails or a type of leech imitation. I as well will be heading after them soon so hopefully the old bag of tricks still work with the clear conditions.

Hey Rocknfish, you ever think about using Gulp! plastics. Alot of wallys have been caught on Gulp! grubs. Just a suggestion.