BERKLEY FRENZY LURES

It is one of the best kept secrets on the walleye tournament circuit, a lure that consistently catches big walleye. Jim Price of Portage La Prairie, Manitoba is one of the most respected trollers in western Canada on the walleye tournament circuit especially when it comes to hunting down big walleyes out on Traverse Bay, Lake Winnipeg. Jim says the medium diving Berkley Frenzy has been the secret. I found this out first hand when I fished with Jim on the Winnipeg River this past August. Launching at Pinawa on the edge of Whiteshell Provincial Park an osprey circled overhead as we headed out. I wasn't sure whether he was watching us or the huge goldeye that were swirling everywhere, plucking the emerging mayflies off the surface in the back eddies and slack water. Every once in a while there'd be an explosion of baitfish on the surface, driven up by marauding schools of pike, walleye and smallmouth bass. Current flow was strong in this section of the mighty Winnipeg River, created by a summer of record rainfall. A burning hot July and August had also driven up the surface water temperature which registered 71 Fahrenheit or 20 Celsius on my Bottom Line Fish Finder. This combination of warm water and good current flow was stacking up fish in the oxygen rich waters.

As we started fishing Jim caught four walleye in a row, including one in the five pound range, using a Berkley Frenzy Medium Diver crankbait in the perch pattern. By letting out about 20 metres of 14 pound test Fireline with six pound test diameter, he was able to get this crankbait to dive to about 14 feet as a maximum depth.

The 80 h.p Yamaha four stroke outboard on my Lund Pro V was pushing the boat at about three kilometre an hour into the current, making the baits dive and bounce off the rocky boulders that littered the bottom in the area we were fishing .

Soon his brother-in-law John and myself had similar baits on, again with amazing results. By getting these baits down in shallow current areas, in short eight hour we caught all kinds of walleye as well as bass and some decent pike.

This same pattern of shallow water trolling had paid off for me on two trips earlier in August, one to Lake of the Woods for jumbo walleye and one on the southwest end of Lake Winnipeg out of Winnipeg Beach.

Then this fall Jim told me of the success he'd had with this bait both on Traverse Bay and on the Red River north of Winnipeg. Sure enough, on my first trip out for greenback walleye on the Red this fall I nailed a 10 pound walleye on Frenzy in the first five minutes of fishing. What a lure!

Visit the Berkley website at www.berkley-fishing.com

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