5 Best Walleye Lures You Can't Be Without

From jigs to crankbaits, these essential lures should be in every walleye angler's tackle box.

These five lures are the best walleye baits. | Dreamstime | justinhoffmanoutdoors | 104633768

Walleyes can be found in deep lakes and windy rivers. They inhabit the sprawling Great Lakes and tiny backwoods waters. But no matter where you fish for walleyes, these lures should be in your tackle box.

1. Jigs: The Most Versatile Walleye Lure

Jigs and walleyes go together like peanut butter and jelly. | Joe Shead

Jigs are some of the most versatile and most essential walleye lures. They are the perfect tool for spring rivers and are just as effective while jigging points or reefs on lakes. Jigs probably account for more walleyes than any other lure.

Tipping Jigs with Live or Artificial Bait

Cast or vertically jig them with live nightcrawlers, leeches or minnows. Or tip them with curly tail grubs, paddle tails or use hair jigs.

Best Jig Sizes

Use ¼- 1/8- or even 1/16-ounce jigs to pitch to weed walleyes or ½- or 3/8-ounce sizes to cut through heavy river current. There’s no bad time or place to fish a jig for walleyes.

2. Slip Bobber Rigs: Finesse for Finicky Fish

Live bait fished under a slip bobber can save the day when the bite gets tough. | northlandtackle.com

Slip bobbers are the ticket when you need to present live bait to finicky fish or you want to keep your lure from fouling in wood, weeds or rocks. Set your slip bobber to keep your bait just off bottom (or above snags).

Jigs or plain hooks weighted with split shot and fished with live minnows, leeches or nightcrawlers are the usual setups. You won’t be able to cover a lot of water, but slip bobbers are an excellent methods of catching fish once you’ve found them.

3. Live-Bait Rigs: Covering Ground with Live Action

Live-bait rigs can be fished with spinners or without. You can weight them down with walking sinkers or bottom bouncers. | Joe Shead

Live-bait rigs are the perfect way to cover water when walleyes are scattered over flats. They allow you to quickly cover water, but the scent and feel of a live nightcrawler, minnow or leech is too much for even a lethargic walleye to resist.

Simple Rigging with Nightcrawlers and Leeches

At its simplest form, put a ¼- to ½-ouncewalking sinker on your line ahead of a barrel swivel. Then run a 3- to 6-foot snell to a plain hook tipped with a minnow or leech. This low-profile rig can be fished very slowly.

Spinner Rigs and Bottom Bouncers Explained

Alternatively, use a spinner rig complete with a spinner and beads ahead of the hook for added attraction. You can use 2- or even 3-hook rigs for either setup when fishing with nightcrawlers to improve your hooking percentage. You’ll have to go a bit faster to keep the spinner spinning; say, 1 mile an hour. In deeper water or on snaggy bottom, instead of the light walking sinker, beef up your weight to a 1- or 2-ounce bottom bouncer. The rule of thumb is one ounce of weight for every 10 feet of depth to keep your presentation on bottom.

4. Crankbaits: Power Fishing for Active Walleyes

Crankbaits like the Yo-Zuri Crystal Minnow cover a lot of water quickly and are good search baits for scattered walleyes. | Joe Shead

Crankbaits allow you to cover water even faster than live-bait rigs. Crankbaits work well when fish are aggressive and they make great search tools when fish are scattered. You can cast cranks to shallow reefs, points or other structure.

How to Troll Crankbaits at the Right Depth

They can be trolled up to about 3 mph, letting you cover a lot of water quickly. Use lures that dive to your actual current depth to catch bottom-hugging walleyes. Or select shallower running baits, which can be adjusted with snap weights, to target suspended fish.

Using Planer Boards to Expand Your Coverage

When trolled behind planer boards, like the boards made by Church Tackle, you can spread out your lures to cover a larger swath of water. Multi-line trolling with planer boards allows an organized and efficient presentation of lots of lures—as many as eight, or even 10 crankbaits at a time. Check your local regulations first.

The one downside of crankbaits is they may be too large and fast when fish are in a negative or neutral mood.

5. Vertical Baits: Jigging for Aggressive Strikes

The jigging Rapala is normally thought of as an ice fishing lure, but more open-water walleye anglers are using it to jig over schools of fish. | Rapala.com

Blade Baits and Jigging Raps for Open Water

While jigs were (and still are) the most common way to vertically jig for walleyes, blade baits and swimming lures like the jigging Rapala are proving they’re not just for ice fishing. Open-water anglers can have success with these lures as well.

Tips for Finding and Fishing Suspended Schools

If you find a school, jig these lures aggressively just above it and hang on! Strikes can be violent, as walleyes gulp down these erratically moving lures.