Controlling Variables (My Nutcase OCD Issues that Help Me Catch More BIG Fish)
Fishing is an inexact science. Many of the variables are outside our control. The weather, the seasons, the attitudes of the fish, the abundance of forage, the presence of water skiers—we are largely at the mercy of these things. Of course, we try to learn as much as possible about all these variables and how walleye will PROBABLY act and react. But because we have so little control over so much that’s going on, I recommend going overboard to control the things that you have 100% control of.
Mostly I’m referencing gear and tackle. Use quality equipment and rig it correctly. You could take the boat into account here too, but suffice it to say, “service your boat often.” Change batteries every couple years. Use a water-separating fuel filter. If you fish tournaments or take traveling fishing vacations, carry spare pumps and transducers. There’s no reason to lose fishing time or fishing success because your boat is “limping” due to neglect. But day-in and day-out, paying extra attention to the variables at your control will result in lots more walleye and particularly lots more trophy walleye—the margin for error is slimmer on the big lugs!
Controlling Variables With Quality Gear. I Go Overboard on Quality--OCD--Reel is a Daiwa 2506C Ito (Mega Bass) Edition Originally Only Available in Japan For Mega Bucks. I Foung This One Used on Ebay (For Cheap-Under $400) and Affixed It to a G. Loomis 722 GLX Which is the Original Jig Stick All Others Have Aspired to Ever Since. Best Short Jig Stick Ever Designed and the First Rod to Take Loomis Into the Walleye and Bass Markets (Previously Only a Salmon, Trout and Steelhead Rod Company). I Have About Half a Dozen 722's In My Inventory of Oldies But Goodies. Sometimes Controlling Variables Isn't Cheap! Note that though I've stocked up with extremely expensive gear, in some cases I'm still using reels purchased in the late '90's. So instead of buying mid-grade $100 reels every 3 years when they wear out or break, I use the high end reels for 20 years or more and for that entire time I get the pleasure of using oh-so-fine equipment. The cost is actually about the same to use high-end reels for decades vs mid-grade or cheapies that are never awesome in the hand and fail on the water within a few years--so you have to spend more money on replacements. Every few years, I send my best reels to specialty reel shops for tuning and fresh drag washers/bearings etc. to keep them in tip top condition. My mid-grade reels suffer through me trying to replace drag washers and such at home. I'm not that competant at it. But again, I'm controlling the variables I can!
There is no reason to EVER break off a walleye. I respool various set ups in my arsenal so often it’s almost my “hand washing” OCD issue. I keep a box full of bulk spools of my preferred lines and a line stripper within reach of my easy chair in the living room (6 pound mono for spinning reels and 12 pound fluorocarbon for casting reels...plus lots of various outliers--8 pound mono for slip bobbers, metered braid for back up trolling reels, new lines I want to test next week etc.). And I can confidently say that in 35ish years fishing walleye 75-100 days per year with many thousands of fish caught I’ve NEVER broken off a walleye (lost plenty for other reasons but that’s another story).
You too should respool often, fresh line could be the biggest single maintenance expense in an avid angler’s boat—more than double the annual cost of servicing the engine! If you’ve got 6 or 8 jig sticks, half a dozen riggin’ rods, half dozen crank trollers, and half dozen crank/swimbait casters you are at risk of forgetting to respool the slip bobber rods! If you are a full-on, multi-method, year-round walleye chasing monster, then you’ll have annual line bills into the hundreds of dollars. And worth every penny when you hook a walleye weighing into the teens!
Certainly, respooling is critical, but so is paying attention to the status of the last three feet of line above your lure. I check that line after every single fish. Even after little shrimp fish. Same for snags…even a minor snag that pops free easily could cause a nick that will fail you when you hook the fish of a lifetime. So after every catch and after every snag, you really ought to run your fingers up the line. Even the tiniest nick and I recommend retying. Why risk losing a horse-sized walleye over a 15-20 second retie? (Goes without saying, but I’m saying it…best be able to tie a knot…a strong and perfect knot…in under 30 seconds. My numb multiple sclerosis wrecked fingers can do it and so can you. If you can’t tie a palomar knot in under 30 seconds you best practice a bit!)
When’s the last time you lubed your reels? Seriously, we’ve all got umpteen thousand dollars into our gear not counting the boat and truck. You might even be like me and prefer the super spendy reels? No?-- you prefer the less costly reels and just replace them when they wear out? Well, did you know that on a spinning reel you are supposed to oil the line roller on the bail EVERY SINGLE FISHING DAY? And on the cheaper reels that just have a bushing for the roller rather than a bearing it’s even more important to keep it oiled. And guess what that little roller does other than let the line turn the corner to the spool without too much friction? That little roller is the anti-twist mechanism to reduce line-coiling twist!
And how often have you had to fight with the damn twisted line after a few hours of fishing jigs with spinning tackle…casting big wads off the spool? Be honest, you tend to respool spinning reels when they’ve lost so much line from twist knots that what you are doing is adding more line rather than replacing old line (grin emoji). Maybe if you’d drip a little oil on the roller EVERY NOW AND THEN you wouldn’t have as much line twist? Yeah, even with a lubed line roller spinning reels are line twisting demons and I avoid them for everything but light jig fishing where spinning gear excels (and some slip bobbering).
Hey, I even have a trophy walleye line twist story…was out on the Columbia River deep vertical jig fishing the “rebar hell” of the old flooded townsite near Arlington OR. Hardly anybody ever fished there then and even less fish there now. Jigging 45 feet down in February and set the hook hard on a big fish…a real big fish. When I tried to reel down I got maybe half a turn and the spool jammed. Couldn’t reel forward or back and the big pig fish started to run…couldn’t get any drag…spool was jammed. Ended up with my arm in the water pointing the rod down under the water to give the fish as much room to run as I could while I picked at the line-twist loop that had caught the bail arm. Buddy, Eric “Pa” Dirks, did a fantastic job keeping the boat directly over the fish on a breezy day. After what seemed like forever, I finally got the loop of line out of the tension I’d reeled into it and fought the fish to the boat--13.25 pounds! A real horse, and I would have lost her for sure if Pa hadn’t been on the boat control. BTW that’s when I learned to lube the line roller, especially on bushed models like I was using back then in about 1990. And if you try to tell me you’ve never had a loop of twisted line catch the bail arm on a spinning reel, then you probably don’t fish that much!
Big Ol' 13.25 Pound Lug Was Nearly Lost to a Loop in My Twisty Line. Now I Oil the Spinning Reel Line-Roller Bearing Pretty Much Daily to Reduce Twist. And Note That Rod with The Old School Guides is a Loomis 722 Blank Custom Built For Me in the Late 1980's--To This Day, My Favorite Rod Blank for Deep Vertical Jigging...OK, The 6'6" St. Croix Medium Power Rods Are Pretty Sweet Too!
Let me take this another step…I set up a 120 foot “line fixing” course in my front yard. Every couple trips my spinning tackle gets a de-twist session. I hook the end of my line to a series of about a dozen different sizes and types of swivels that are clipped end-to-end to my barbecue—ball bearing swivels, big swivels, small swivels, chain swivels etc. With my line attached to the end of the series of daisy-chained swivels I walk out away from the BBQ while tightening and loosening the line to let the grouped swivels absorb the twist. Generally about 100 feet is as far as I need to go with a jig stick. Then I walk back toward the swivels while again alternately tightening and loosening the line while reeling it back onto the spool. Works great to save that spool of twisted crap! I also use this "line fixing" course to compare and calibrate my line counters, test casting distance of various lures and dial in the spool brake on brand new casting reels. Sure people driving by see me out in the yard in the middle of the National Forest looking every bit the part of backwoods lunatic. But, nobody has showed up to strap me into a straight jacket yet!
If you use braid on spinning reels you won’t have noticeable line twist—the braid absorbs it super well—until it’s too late! When twist takes your braided line—and it will eventually do so—it’s the end of the day for that reel and sometimes the rod too as the braid ties itself around the guides (yes, even micro-guides) and becomes an unrepairable wadded knot of frustration! I’m not a fan of the braids and frequently spool up a couple reels with it just for testing…which always sends me back to fluorocarbon and monofilament lines.
Casting reels are great workhorses, they don’t twist line, they cast WAY farther than spinning reels, modern “palmable” casters give fantastic grip and control for fighting fish, they work “like butter” with 12 pound fluorocarbon line (which doesn’t work well on spinning reels—it’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, for fun it’s a wonderful toy)…I flat out love quality casting reels. But why do they make so many funny noises when casting? Kind of a clicking whirring clack? Oh, there’s bearings inside that chatter when dry? Well hell, I guess that’s why almost all my more than 30 casting reels have a removable side plate? And look…there’s several bearings including the spool bearings right there easily accessible under the side plate. Funny how a couple drops of oil makes those casting reels silent again, just like new. So how often have you oiled your spool bearings or other bearings on your casting reels? Have you EVER opened the side plate to peer inside? It's one of those controllable variables that I recommend spending more time on. I even keep ultra-light viscosity reel bearing oil in my boat so I can drip some on spinning reel bail rollers every single day on the water. I tend to maintain casting reels about monthly unless they start “talking” to me with bearing noise and I’ll pop off the side plate and oil ‘em up right out on the water.
Certainly there are lots more variables to control—the quality of hooks you use, the quality of snaps you use, the type and durability of the guides on your rods and on and on ad infinitum. But if you pay extra attention to your line and your reels, that will control some of the variables that’re involved in more lost fish than any other cause. Controlling variables is well worth the effort because the alternative is losing fish. Don’t know about you, but losing fish is not something I’m willing to accept!