Birdshot and backlashes

Once upon a time, about 65 years ago, no serious walleye fisherman ever ventured forth on northern waters without his supply of June Bug Spinners. Indeed, with many fisher-folk, the June Bug Spinner was the only way to fish walleyes. Some spinners were rigged with a plain hook with a minnow or crawler for bait, some with a strip-on device using a wire which was threaded through the minnow and a double hook attached at the end. A metal sleeve slid down the wire and anchored the minnow in place. The rig was usually trolled and the spinner would revolve at a moderate speed even with the outboard humming along at a pretty good clip. It was called a June Bug Spinner because the spinner blade was shaped somewhat like a June bug, although June bugs were not aquatic critters, then as now.First time we used one was at Leech Lake in the Walker area about 1938. Went fishing with a high school teacher who spent his summers in and around Hackensack. We snapped June Bug spinners on our wire leaders (everybody used wire leaders tied to braided silk lines). We put a pretty good-sized lead sinker about 18 inches ahead of the spinner, rigged our chubs on strip-ons and headed up the shore. Our intent was to string up a half dozen or so walleyes, which we did without much difficulty, along with a 12- pound northern pike. The rigs were quite effective. Of course, as time went on and walleye fishing got more intense, all manner of new lures and rigs appearedLike Lindy Rigs and other slip sinker combos, jig-and-minnow combinations and artificial lures like the River Runt Spook, Mirrolure and Rapala, some of which are standard fare today. However, the old June Bug Spinners can still catch fish and they are making somewhat of a comeback under the sponsorship of Yellow Bird Products. The spinners are being made by the Prescott Spinner Co., which used to be in Prescott, Wisconsin, but the whole works is now being manufactured at Frankfort, Illinois, which is at least one U.S. tackle company still in business. Tackle rep handling this stuff is Larry Whitmore out of Renner, South Dakota. Larry used to work in the Ely area, starting out with the Boy Scout Base in the 1960s, but went into tackle sales handling stuff like Shimano reels, plastic leeches and other tackle goodies.Strip-on spinners were popular around Ely for lake trout and a lot of the resort guides used them on Basswood, Snowbank, Burntside, Knife, Roland and Argo. Last time we used strip-ons with minnows was about 1968 on Roland Lake, going up with Billy Zup right after ice out when Zup still had his lodge at Curtain Falls. The trout were in shallow water, maybe six feet down, and we would simply troll with the strip-ons and whack ’em. We not only got a limit of nice lakers, we had trout for shore lunch, what Billy called “Quick Mojakka.” Everybody around Ely knows the way to make real mojakka, but Billy simply heated up a couple cans of potato soup in a pot, added hunks of pink trout meat, butter and a little seasoning.It was superb. Maybe because it was a cold day and maybe because we were hungry as the dickens. But I remember that particular shore lunch long after most of them have been forgotten.Just for the heck of it, maybe we’ll give the strip-on another try in one of our Ely area lakes. By now, the fish should have forgotten what a strip-on looks like and maybe it will fool ’em..