How To Build A Fish Attractor

Give Crawlers a Quick Whirl for Clearwater Walleyes

The Great Lakes and surrounding waterways are exceptionally clear during the late spring and early summer periods. In some cases, bottom can be seen as deep as 60 feet. During days when it's so calm that it looks like there was a sheet of plastic-wrap pulled tight across the surface, you'd swear you're silently floating over the bottom in a hovercraft rather than motoring in a boat. It's aesthetically pleasing to the angler's eye, for sure, but not conducive for convincing the walleyes to bite during daylight hours.

But offer them something that combines a realistic look, natural taste and smell, tantalizing flash and vibration, and pull it fast enough, sometimes walleyes don't have time to judge whether or not it's the real deal, and you can fool these picky predator fish into taking a poke.

What's the spin? Add a whirling spinner blade ahead of a live nightcrawler and fish it fast and near the bottom. The result is often walleyes in the livewell when all else is failing.

Fast and furious
Enter Mark Martin, of Twin Lake, Michigan. He's been a touring walleye tournament pro since the late 1980's, and won the first ever Professional Walleye Trail (PWT) Championship in 1990. In numerous tournaments he's finished near or at the top by pulling crawlers from within the gunwales of his Lund Boat. And almost every time there's been a spinner blade at the head of an oversized wriggling worm.

"Crawler harnesses work wonders when fishing reef complexes within the clearwater of the Great Lakes. However, you have to fish them fairly fast as there's such a large area to cover, and, fish in clearwater often need speed to stimulate their strike instinct," says Martin. "And when I add a blade as an attractor, I make sure it's not too gaudy. Northland's new Baitfish-Image willow leaf blades fit the bill."

Unlike fish that reside in stained waters, walleyes that live in clearwater rely on their eyesight to zone in on forage. Because of this, Martin uses the Baitfish-Image blades to add just enough flicker. The flash blended with natural patterns that mimic baitfish make an effective team.

When fish are hugging bottom, one of Martin's favorite tactics is to pull spinners behind leadcore line. The design of the willow leaf blade is perfect for this ploy because it has the least amount of water resistance due to the narrow and lightly cupped shape, thus they run deeper, and at higher speeds. Martin trolls from 1.

Fish Attractors Added to Western North Carolina Lakes

Fish attractors were purchased through a grant that was awarded to the Commission by the Habitat Enhancement Program (HEP), a cooperative initiative by Duke Energy, the Commission and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources to enhance, create and protect fish and wildlife habitat along the Catawba-Wateree River basin in North and South Carolina. So far, 200 attractors have been placed in Lake James and Lake Rhodhiss with the remaining attractors to be placed in Lake Hickory and Lookout Shoals in May. While Commission biologists selected the sites based on the lakes’ need for increased habitat diversity, historic angling location and opportunities for enhancing angling success, they relied on public assistance to place the attractors in the water. As their name implies, the fish attractors look like giant porcupine quills. PVC pipes are connected to a ball-like sphere, forming a circular structure, which measures about five feet in diameter. Multiple attractors are placed together so that the pipes overlap to increase habitat complexity and provide cover and refuge for a variety of fishes. In time, algae and plankton should grow on attractors, concentrating even more fish in one area.

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