Fishing Places

Fall: Bruti Time

Bruti. It’s the walleye angler’s plural of Brutus, which is what we call a monster walleyes in honor of Popeye’s favorite rival. Considering all the tournaments we’ve fished on Lake Erie where summer Bruti are the norm, we got to thinking about just how much bigger those fish were going to be this fall.

Last year, Keith and his son Tommy won the second day competition of a North American Walleye Anglers team tournament with a huge six-fish limit that included a 10.4 pounder, the largest caught over five days of tournament fishing. That 32-incher, once the walleyes put on the fall feed bag, probably would have weighed somewhere in the low teens.

Fishing Sailboat Bayahibe La Romana Dominican Republic:

If walleyes in the teens don’t get an angler’s juices flowing, they’d best take up golf. Let’s talk about targeting these fall Bruti.

Although Storm’s new Lightning Shad caught Keith and Tommy’s big fish, you need slightly more refined techniques to fool fall trophies. Consider two keys: Bigger and slower.

You’ve all heard the saying “Big baits for big fish.” The only time we really believe that’s true is in the fall when big fish are fattening up for winter. To make baits bigger, there are several things to do.

For jigging, bulk your jig up with a plastic body like a teaser tail, a grub, or even a twister tail in front of the live bait. These things change the overall presentation to give the look of a bigger bait fish.

Fly in fishing on lake:

Better yet, try plastics with scent, like Berkley’s Power Bait. It seems, especially in the fall, scent can trigger fish and make them hold on to a bait longer allowing the angler to get a good hook set. You should also use bigger minnows, like large shiners, creek chubs or even suckers. If we can only get fatheads, we’ll often put two of them on. Because of this big long live bait, we almost always use a stinger. Although some anglers believe a stinger hampers the bait action and gets fewer bites, this is rarely a factor in the fall since the fish are usually so aggressive. We use the P/K Clip Stinger, which we designed with 10/4 FireLine for the leader that allows the bait to move very naturally because of its four-pound test diameter. The FireLine is also so durable that when you change jig sizes or colors, you can simply unclip the stinger and put it on the new jig. The stinger’s treble hook also has one of the bends reversed. That’s the one you insert ahead of the tail or the back of the minnow, which keeps the other two hooks in perfect position for instant penetration upon the hookset.

When jigging, don’t use an aggressive jigging action. Lift, pause, let it drop slowly.

Good locations for fall jigging are, of course, rivers. But don’t overlook casting jigs to shorelines in reservoirs when the fish are up shallow. Look for steeper breaks off of the shoreline where the bottom drops from two to five feet real quickly and forms a wall that walleyes can use to herd baitfish against.

Fall river fishing:

Another good jigging spot is shoreline breaks or off-shore humps that drop from 20 to 40 feet, forming a big rock face that walleyes also use for trapping bait.

“Big” is the general rule for fall crankbaits, too. We love cranks when we find the pods of open water basin fish, staging on the bottom in deep water in the general vicinity of spawning rivers. Big, subtle action baits like a shallow-running Storm ThunderStick are tried first. We’ve found that dampening the action a little bit with SuspendStrips (sticky strips of lead from Storm) placed on the lure’s belly near the head and the tail gives a refined action that walleyes love. The extra weight also keeps the bait down in the strike zone when it pauses, instead of floating toward the surface. Normally we’d put the SuspendStrips at the center of the bait, but putting them on the ends takes away some of the “wag” in the bait’s action.

Because the shallow ThunderStick doesn’t dive deeply on its own, we team it up with Off Shore Snap Weights. Fall fish rarely suspend high and are usually within four feet of the bottom to right on the bottom. Depths of 30 to 40 feet are common. Often, we’ll use a three-ounce Snap Weight for trolling crankbaits, which is the maximum you can use and still spread the lures with Off Shore’s Side Planer in-line boards.

Use the bottom up technique to establish depth. With the Snap Weight attached 50 feet or so in front of the crankbait, freespool the weight all the way down to the bottom and let boat speed pick it up. Drop it again and note how much line is out (line counter reels are excellent tools for this, or you can count passes across the baitcaster spool). Now reel the lure in, clean off the mud and let it back out with 10 feet or so less line. Experiment until you no longer dredge stuff off the bottom with the lure. After awhile, you’ll get a good feel for where your lure runs.

Ice Fishing:

To speed up the depth finding process, order the latest edition of “Precision Trolling” (1-800-353-6958), a book that has developed depth charts for most good walleye crankbaits and now has a section on targeting depths with Snap Weights. Just keep an eye on your sonar screen and make sure you’re never running your lure below any fish you see.

One last note for catching Bruti with crankbaits is to use them in shallow water around rocky structure like reefs and shorelines–especially if the wind is pounding in. A lot of times you’ll have turbid water and need more vibration and some flash. A great lure here is the Storm Hot-N-Tot Flash, which allows fish to home in with flash and more vibration. You still want to move it slow.

This fall remember: Big baits mean big Bruti. Jig, troll or cast on the waters you’re fishing and odds are you’ll land your biggest fish of the year.

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Tags: Although Storm, Ice Fishing, Lake Erie, Lightning Shad, Snap Weight