Mid-summer as a walleye angler is a time to slow down, try new things, and think outside the box. Particularly, for me, this is the end of the 2025 tournament season and a time to try new things and work on improving as an angler. One of the ways to do this is to try new techniques, and sometimes that means breaking out some secrets from the Great Lakes!
Fishing with Tom Sieburg of Tom Tom’s Guide Service, we set out on an early August day to see if a couple Lake Erie tactics could produce some mid-summer Lake Sharpe walleyes. Sure enough, a walleye is a walleye wherever it swims, and these techniques proved to be a successful option on the Missouri River as well!
The simplest adaptation to this presentation was upsizing the crankbaits that are trolled on traditional leadcore set ups. Last week, I deployed #5 and #7 Rapala Shad Raps and pitted Purpledescent and Blue directly against each other to see if color made a difference. Tom busted out some much larger, much more aggressive Bandits to try to trigger bites. Despite the larger sizes, the fish weren’t deterred!
Learn More: Blue vs Purple, Does Color Matter When Trolling Crankbaits
The major wrinkle, and the most productive method, was deploying spoons behind torpedo weights. Tom rigged up 10-ounce lead torpedo weights on 50-pound braid, with a 10-15 foot monofilament leader to a light spoon that fluttered behind. The torpedo dove the bait down quickly, and the spoon fluttered enticingly behind off the bottom.
Utilizing a Garmin LiveScope, we were able to pinpoint exactly where the 10-ounce torpedo brought our spoons to, and using line counters were able to ensure our baits were fishing in the perfect strike zone the entire time. As the forage rose in the water column so did our baits, as the forage sank down towards bottom, we were able to adjust accordingly.
We deployed these new techniques in the back of the stilling basin, where the amount of fish was only outnumbered by the amount of forage. Despite these being Lake Erie trophy walleye tactics, they had no problem putting numerous 12-17 inch Lake Sharpe walleyes in the boat too. This served as a good reminder that a walleye is a walleye wherever it swims and being a walleye – it is a top end predator!
Walleyes of all sizes are constantly looking for their next meal, and whether that is gizzard shad, smelt, or lake herring/ciscoe walleye are going to take strikes at it. Our spoons perfectly emulated these forage species, particularly an individual of this forage in trouble, as it fluttered helplessly away from the large clouds of bait. As the clouds of forage scrambled as our torpedo went through, this confusion only did more to entice top end predators like walleye.
This served as a great reminder that you should never be afraid to fish aggressively, try new tactics, and think outside the box. When you do this, it no matter what will result in a learning experience, and many times result in fish in the boat too. Fortunately for us, these Lake Erie tactics provided both for us on a mid-summer day on Lake Sharpe!
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