“When the water’s muddy and moving, handlining is hands-down the most productive method for catching walleye,” claims veteran tournament angler and handline advocate Gary (“Bo”) Bowman of Howell, Michigan. “In the Detroit River in the spring, you’ll see more boats sprouting handline reels than traditional fishing rods two to one,” he said, adding: “and you’ll see the method used to catch walleyes in rivers all over the Midwest, including some of the major tournaments like the PWT, MWC and FLW. The walleye pro’s who know how to rig their boats and use handlines use them on the tournament circuit every chance they get.”

One of those pros-in-the-know is Joe Rosell, a Michigan-based PWT competitor who allowed me to watch as he rigged a boat specifically for tackling the popular spring tactic.

“It’s so simple, really,” said Rosell, of Utica. “I can’t believe more anglers aren’t set up for it. Then again, it is sort of regional method for catching walleyes, or started out that way, as a way to maintain contact with the bottom of a river like the Detroit, where the depth varies so much and so quickly and the current can be vicious.”

Basically, handlining involves using lead weights and wire line too heavy to use with conventional fishing tackle to get lures down in conditions where water flow and radically varying depths conspire to frustrate common slow-trolling techniques. It’s a tactic pioneered by self proclaimed “river rats” fishing for walleyes forced by the current to hug the bottom as they migrate through the Detroit River each spring. Early anglers actually pirated parts from vintage, hand-cranked Victorola phonograph players to construct reels capable of handling the wire line and the weights the slow-trolling technique required. Clamping the reels on the gunwales of their aluminum fishing boats, paying out the cable and working the baits by hand, and bringing in their catch Old Man and the Sea-style hand over fist, the highly productive tactic was tagged “handlining.” Over the half century since the first ‘eyes were hauled in by hand, specialized tackle – as well as the technique -- have evolved into a mainstream tactic that is now practiced by walleye anglers in the larger river systems throughout the upper Midwest.

The Reel Deal

The heart of the handline system is the reel, a single-action, level-wind design with a spring loaded spool built to hold – and automatically retrieve -- at least 200 feet of 60-pound-test braided and coated 7-strand wire. The reel is located amidships on the gunwale of the boat, usually in pairs, one to a side. The reels come with mounting hardware that allow them to be clamped to the gunwale or a hand rail, dropped into a rod holder base, or slipped into a track affixed atop the gunwale or on a rail for portable applications that can easily be removed when the technique is not employed.

The rail mount is the most popular way to rig handline reels aboard today’s walleye boats, and the most common handrail hardware is offered by Bert’s Custom Tackle. Their six inch track model sells for about $25 and fits to their generic rail mount bracket, which lists for about $30, and is available with hardware that will accommodate most modern handline reels.

At one time, there were several manufacturers offering handline reels, all based in Michigan where the technique was pioneered and perfected on the Detroit River walleye fishery. Today the market is dominated by two: the Kachman model, made by Riviera Trolling Systems of Port Austin, and the A&S reel made in Ecose.

The Kachman is made of Lexan and stainless steel, is 6.5 inches in diameter, about 3 inches thick, has a capacity of 200 feet of 60-pound-test braided wire and weighs about three pounds with the mounting hardware. The A&S reel, built of aluminum and steel is similar in size with a 300 foot capacity and weighs about 6 pounds, including the c-clamp that it comes with. Both have a dedicated following among hard-core handliners and retail for about $170 spooled with wire and complete with mounting hardware. The reels’ release tension and clutch functions are fully adjustable and pre-set at the factory for common fishing conditions, which allow them to pay out wire to the pull of a one pound weight and to retrieve wire when that tension is relieved by the angler.

Other Rigging Options

Other than installing the reel, which along with the mounting hardware is portable, there is little else rigging-wise that must be done to adapt a boat for handlining. You will probably need a kicker motor to operate at the 1-1.5 mph (SOG) speeds required to properly employ the technique, and because the tactic involves zigzagging at 45-degree angles into the current, some anglers put a ring-style prop guard on the lower unit to keep the wire line from fouling the prop at the turns. Serious handliners also prefer fish finders with large screens that can be monitored from seating positions farther aft from the console than the traditional helm fishing position. Some actually mount the fish finder monitors father back in the cockpit to make them easier to see from the seats near the stern, where the handlining is performed with one hand to the tiller of the kicker and the other working the wire.

The Fishing Process

In the hands of experienced ‘liners, Bowman claims, boats so-rigged are downright deadly on walleyes that never see baits presented by any other method. Working into a current over five mph or more, the operator strives to maintain a speed-over-ground (SOG) of 1.2-1.5 mph in a zigzag pattern. He controls and steers the kicker by hand while seated to the rear of the cockpit, either on pedestal chair or on the rear casting platform with his feet on the floor, monitoring his sonar looking for fish and the cover walleyes seek on the bottom anywhere from ten to 50 feet below. When it’s time to fish, the anglers slips the weight over the side which draws wire from the reel, mounted forward along the top of the gunwale. He clips his pre-rigged leaders to the clasps along the shank, making sure to place the bottom leader, which is half the length of the upper, to the shank so that when the lures are running behind the weight below they appear to be following each other. Combining the pull of the weight and the forward progress of the boat, the angler allows the reel to pay out wire, which is running across his fingers held over the side of the boat, until he feels the weight touch the bottom. At that point, he determines just how much wire he needs to have out to allow the weight to tick the bottom when he drops his fishing arm back, yet pull it up and off bottom when he swings his arm forward while the boat makes headway, and proceeds with the fishing. Keeping one hand overboard suspending the wire with two to five fingers**, the other hand on tiller and both eyes glued to the fish finder to monitor the bottom conditions he is approaching, the handliner works his way slowly up-current.

Maintaining such intimate contact with the bottom, the handliner can instantly react to the changing bottom conditions, scouring fish-holding holes by dropping back to allow the lures to plunge deeper, or swinging his arm --and the rig -- forward, to leap over obstructions or work atop humps. Slack line between the angler and the reel is automatically taken-up by the spring-loaded reel, which free-spools extra wire when needed to go deeper but is not capable of reeling in the weighted wire on its own.

The Payoff

Strikes are announced by a sudden “jarring” and shaking on the wire, which registers “in no uncertain terms” across the fingers, says Bowman. The handliner forgoes the traditional hook-set that might rip the lure from the mouth of the hard-lined walleye, going straight into the steady hand-over-hand retrieve to the waiting net as the reel retrieves the excess wire.

“If that doesn’t sound exciting to someone used to rod and reel fishing, just give them a day in late May with me aboard my handline boat,” offered Bowman. “We’ll catch more walleyes – and bigger fish -- than any anglers using conventional tackle, and have fun doing it.”

And that, they say is the bottom line, right?