Presenting slipbobber rigs 28 feet deep in frigid waves or 4 feet down on a balmy, flat-calm night represent two ends of a spectrum encompassing dozens of overlooked opportunities for big walleyes. Few if any know more about it than Greg Bohn, author of Master the Art of Slip Bobbering. Slipfloating professionally, as a guide, a writer, and a tackle-industry player for 30-plus years, Bohn has become a bobbering maestro.
“It’s all about watching walleyes hit drifted slipbobber rigs in full view on 10-inch electronic screens,” he says. “It’s unbelievable. The technique uncovered secrets regarding how walleyes strike float rigs. I’ve watched hundreds, maybe thousands of walleyes reacting to slipbobber rigs by now. Nothing tells you what’s hot and what’s not quicker than this method. When you can see walleyes reject, you know it’s time to tweak.
“It’s the same reason we feel blind when ice fishing without sonar today. When we’re ice fishing, watching fish react to a rig tells us when everything’s right, and it tells us when we need to change something. Visual strikes are exciting, but so are rejections, because you can see the fish react one way or the other. Rejections allow you to fine-tune immediately. Now I feel blind when slipbobbering without sonar in open water.
“The technique is so similar to ice fishing it blew my mind at first,” Bohn says. “It keeps you on active fish by allowing you to avoid those dead seas where nothing is moving or reacting. When you spot one, just knowing fish are there keeps you in the game. One of the greatest lessons sonar teaches ice fishermen is discovering it’s not always about catching fish right away. Becoming confident that you can eventually catch the fish you see is what it’s all about.”
Slips of the Trade
“Hundreds of times I’ve informed clients their bobber’s about to go down,” Bohn says. “They look perplexed or think I’m joking when I tell them to get ready to set the hook. Suddenly it’s, ‘Hey—I’ve got one’. These aren’t ordinary walleyes, either. Many are over 10 pounds. Pointing out to them afterwards how I was tracking a big walleye following their rig on a sonar screen is awesome. People eat this stuff up.”
Bohn insists that, without developing this technique, he never would have known big walleyes used the areas where he commonly hunts them today. “Drifting float rigs while watching my electronics has taught me plenty,” he says. “I feel like I have an edge over every other corker on the lake.”
The key, Bohn says, is maneuvering the boat in a manner that keeps the rigs vertical and in the cone of the transducers mounted fore and aft. “It’s tricky,” he warns. “I’ll be the first to admit I’ve wrapped a few bobber rigs around my Minn Kota shaft. One clear byproduct of the technique is the ultra-fine boat control you pick up along the way. Drift speed has to be strictly controlled, and rigging has to match speed. It’s not easy. The rigging has to keep the bait straight down, under the boat. When the rig is pushed or pulled beyond the capacity of your weighting component to keep it straight down, the rig will no longer be in the strike zone, at the desired depth off bottom.”
