• Mini Ultra Light Shad Rap, ULS-4, size 1.5
• Troll quietly with your Minn-Kota.
• Trolls down to 5 feet, has a waited body for casting and has a slow drop when pausing on retrieves.
• Walleyes love it. Added benefit that its small enough to catch Big Crappies and Blue Gills, which he catches quite often.
• Uses 7 to 8 dozen a year, they are a little hard to find, you may have to search online to find them.

• Uses Trilene XL & XT, 6 pound test.
• You will catch twice the fish, set drag on medium and re-tie after 3 fish.
• Lakes are becoming clear. The changing water clarity is another reason for light line.
• The stretch of mono offers three benefits:
• It’s stretch is forgiving and allows for time to make corrections. No give with braid.
• It’s shock absorbing stretch improves hook sets when trolling crank baits.
• You can be off your game and still succeed with mono.

• 1/8 and 1/16 ounce jigs, long lining them will get them down to the bottom.
• How much line? About 7 boat lengths.
• Speed 0.4 to 0.8 mph.
• Your jig doesn’t have to always be on the bottom. Swimming it varying depths 1 to 2 feet off catches fish.
•  Steve can get a 1/16 oz. jig down to 25 feet of water. Give it a try.

• Favorite is the Berkley PowerBait Minnow; 4 inch black shad split tail.
• Once again he uses 1/16 and 1/8 oz. long shank hooks.
• Pitch it out on weed lines, humps, rocks, docks, etc…
• Slow, patient presentation. “Cast it out, put your hand in your pocket and wait. Slow presentation is the key.” "When you think your fishing slow enough, slow it down some more." WWW.
• The slow presentation mimics a dying minnow. Throw in some erratic jig/twitches.
• Keep an eye on your line; you may see it swimming away while your hand is in your pocket.

• Use 2 – 3 inch Red Tail Chubs. Use Rainbows if Red Tails are not available.
• Hook them through the tail, so the minnow is presented upside down backwards.
• Results in the minnow struggling to right itself and creating more action.
• Right before the fish hits you can feel the minnow go nuts. Learn this feel.
• The Walleyes hit this presentation hard, “It’s a Wham! No sucky sucky."

• Tie your hook 2 feet off the bottom.
• Use plastics or live bait.
• The weight will stir up the bottom and attracts fish.

• Stop using rattle baits. Fish are on to the rattle and hear it as an alarm not to bite.
• Color rarely makes a difference.
•  If you only catch one walleye on a spot it means you’re doing it wrong. Try sneaking into your spot, with your electric motor.
• With all the fishing pressure and size restrictions, Steve suggests we go out and find small and obscure lakes. “DNR stocking reports do not always tell the story. Lack of stocking does not mean lack of Walleyes. “
• Steve’s favorite Crappie bait is “The Dumbest looking bait I have ever seen. The Puddle Jumper split tail 2 inch black. It works!”
• Troll the Mini Ultra Rap on the first break 5 to 7 feet of water in spring to locate the Crappies and then pitch the Puddle Jumper.
• Get your kids out in the boat, no distractions and great real life conversations.

• He took about 50 of those Hylex bottles to the lake and tied 15 feet of twine string line to every one of them with a weight on the end of each.
• He waited for it to get windy and then went out on the lake. He through out one bottle out every 100 feet.
• Where they hit 15 feet of water they would hold up and he could now see the edge of the lake.
• He found out that deep water came right up to shore and sometimes way out into the lake.
• For the first time in his life he knew where the edge was.

• Then he would take a heavy bolt tied to some twine and bounce it off the bottom along the 15 foot edge. He found rock, mud, gravel and sand.
• He learned that walleyes sometimes liked the rocks, others the sand or mud, for other reasons.
• He found sunken islands that no one knew about, so he started to map these things out.