Recent years have witnessed a growing use of crankbaits at Canadian camps, despite the fact that you're generally required to bend the barbs down on all your hooks to facilitate catch-and-release. No problem. Sacrifice a few treble hooks for the trip and replace them with barbed versions once you get home.
Crankbaits offer the dual versatility of casting and trolling, working anything from small, shallow, specific areas at slow speeds, to trolling deeper stretches at a more rapid pace.
Fact is, most any crankbaits you've packed for pike will already catch walleyes but, by and large, they're going to be a tad on the big side, with heavy hooks. So to the fray, add a few 3- to 4 1/2-inch walleye crankbaits you'd likely use back home. These typically fall under the minnow-imitator and shad bait categories, in both shallow-running and deep-diving versions. Long, thin lures perhaps best imitate the minnows or ciscoes walleyes are most likely to be eating, while plastic-bodied deep-diving shad baits offer the most versatility and durability for both casting and trolling. If space is at a premium, opt for the shads. Remember, natural whitish forage patterns for clear water and cisco forage, while brighter firetiger or clown patterns make baits more visible in stained water.
Any inlet, shallow rock point, reef top, etc., is an obvious location for walleyes, and in the more southerly lakes in Ontario and Quebec, smallmouth bass. Where the water's stained or dingy, or in lowlight conditions, cast and retrieve cranks with a steady, predictable motion, banging the occasional rock and scraping bottom from time to time. If the water's clear and the sun bright, the finesse of neutral buoyancy minnows like Husky Jerks comes into play. Cast, twitch, twitch, pause-linger-bam! Size 10 or 12 Husky Jerks are excellent for walleyes, while the larger 14s are deadly effective for pike.
The largely untapped element comes into play when trolling deep-diving crankbaits along the perimeters of points, large shallow humps, even rock walls plummeting to deep water along shore. Anglers (and guides) are just catching on to their potential and ease of use; simply run the lure and line out behind the boat, rev up the engine to achieve a modest lure wobble, and scoot along for mixed catches of walleyes and pike down to 20 or 25 feet deep. Consider adding a light wire leader where pike are plentiful-which is generally just about everywhere Canadian walleyes swim-since even hammer handles will eventually nip off your crankbaits, and you can't run down to the nearest store to replace them.
I must admit that, when I go on a far-north Canadian fly-in trip, the allure of walleyes is mostly generated by the thought of fast, easy fishing and hundred-fish days, rather than investing precious time in trying new approaches. So I, like most folks, tend to keep things straightforward and simple. If I wanna play with weird experimental stuff, I usually do it on pike, which has paid off big-time in recent years. This also suggests that similar experimentations might work on walleyes, too.
In the clear lake-trout lakes of southern Canada, a growing number of anglers are catching big walleyes in the evenings by trolling crankbaits over open water, near the surface. Not 2-pound bug-eaters, but 8s to 10s to even 12s-big brutes which have switched to suspended cisco forage -- not in all lakes, but in enough to suggest that longline trolling cranks over open water for suspended fish might pay off big, providing you can tear yourself away from the easy jig bite at the river mouth or waterfall or rapids. Tossing a pair of planer boards into the duffle bag wouldn't be unreasonable, either. It might draw a few strange looks from your camp operator, whose general response is, "You don't need that kind of stuff to catch fish here." But it's worth a shot.
