Do I have the right tackle?

[Sidekick]

In a post below I told you guys about a Canadian fly-in fishing trip that I'm going on in just under two weeks. I've bought a bit of tackle and just want a little more advice before I make my last trip to Bass Pro. I'm kind of on a budget here but I think I've just about got it covered. Here's my list (walleye and pike).

assorted selection of 1/2 oz jig heads
"walleye kit" assorted sizes of jigheads and
3" grubs in about 9 colors
Little George and Joe spinners
assorted Mepps spinners
"Pike kit" assorted spoons and spinners
several 3/4 oz spoons in various colors
biggest Red Devil I could find
20 lb leaders

That's the stuff I bought and I have a bunch of other tackle for bass and panfish I might bring too. I have to keep it light for the plane so I don't want to go too nuts but does the above look like it will do the job? Pike and walleye are a whole new ballgame for me and I don't really know what I am doing.:D

For rods and reels I have 3 Pflueger baitcasters on 6' - 6.5' Ugly Stiks with 10-20 lb braided line and an old Daiwa spinning reel on a 6' Ugly Stik with 10 lb. braided line. I think I'll be alright with this setup. I use baitcasters for darn near everything anymore so I don't anticipate too many problems. Any thoughts or advice? I kind of have to take a minimalist approach here for weight savings.

[Sabre]

I'd add some Storm "wildeye shad" {weighted,soft plastic minnows} in 3 and 4" sizes and assorted colors to that list. Also some wire jig spinner rigs to go with your jig heads and curly tail grubs. I find the 3" size mister twister grubs in grape and bananna colors in combination with 1/4 oz. heads particularly usefull around here.

[Bushman]

We used the Mister Twister white curly tail plastic baits early on, but have since switched to the Berkley 3" white Power Grub because I think they work better. We always have a scissors in the boat and often trim off and taper the first couple of barrels on the front. Where we fish is dark stained water. We always back troll and are moving so those 1/2 ounce jigs with the spinner and a big chunk of bait need weight to get them down. If you are anchored, you probably don't need that much jig weight. The fish will likely be deeper now as the water has warmed, but that has a lot to do with how clear the lake is too. (To digress a minute here, it all depends. Back when I was scuba diving, I went in a clear lake looking for the walleyes. I looked all over out where I thought that they should have been and found nothing. I gave up and went shallow looking for the panfish. That is where I found the walleyes in 3 and 4 feet of water with just their heads covered out of the sun backed in like busses under logs.) I like black 10# Fireline the best for vertical jigging for walleyes. If the weather got rough and we had to front troll, an Erie Dearie (which is a wire spinner rig like Sabre wrote about) in a 1/2 or 5/8 ounce size with bait worked well. A floating jointed Rapala worked well too, but you need to put weight ahead of it to get it down.

This year the biggest northerns in the 40-45" range came from casting spoons like the Jack Of Diamonds and the Johnson Silver Minnow around the weeds. If your lake has pencil weeds have one guy pole you in there and throw a big weedless Johnson Silver Minnow with a white pork rind. It gets pretty exciting when the weeds part and a wake forms behind your lure.:eek:

There are no bass and panfish other than some perch in the lake we fish. If you are bringing fish home, check the regulations, but yellow perch were a "free" fish a few years back and you could bring home as many as you wanted, unlike the walleyes and northerns. There was one group in camp that did nothing but perch fish for that reason.

The northerns don't really know a lure is a bass lure. One year I had been watching a lot of bass fishing on TV and thought those top water buzz baits looked fun to fish. I took a black skirted black jig with an orange safety pin spinner and first cast I caught a 13# northern. The northerns went dog nuts for that buzz bait. I easily caught over a hundred fish with that lure because it was like taking a census of the northerns. They ate the paint down to the lead. That spinner squeaked for some reason and the next year everyone had that lure, but it they didn't work as well as that one that squeaked. Fun lure to fish though.

Another thing about northerns, they bite. Dad always said it was like having an alligator in the boat with you. One bit my buddy in the ankle and I saw another guy with a deep slash all across his palm when he was trying to hold the fish up for a picture. I know the guys on TV find that soft spot under their gull cover to lift them, but miss that spot and you can be into their gill rakers and back teeth. Also they get so wild that a guy really needs to be careful that they don't throw a set of hooks into you. A spring loaded mouth opener and a needle nose pliers are a must.

[Sidekick]

Interesting about the buzzbait. I was thinking that as aggressive as pike are something like that might be pretty fun so I put one in my tacklebox. Sounds like I might have a lot of fun with it. I dug out my old duffle I was issued twenty some years ago and might start weighing my gear this weekend.