If every hardwater angler was as gifted as my buddy Doug Stange—and
they kept every walleye they caught—there’d be precious
few fish left in our waters. Stange’s ability to catch
walleye through a hole in the ice is mind-boggling. If he’s
ice fishing with a bunch of other anglers, more often than not
he’ll account for half the fish caught. If the bite is
super tough, his percentage will be even higher.
 Stange’s
understanding of winter-walleye behaviour is amazing. Tell him
what the walleye are eating in a particular body of water, and
he’ll tell you where to drill the holes and where to place
your lure. He’s equally adept at reading sonar. Every time
he moves to a new hole he fine-tunes his flasher, and when he
spots a walleye he shakes, rattles and rolls his lure to get
the fish to bite. And the more walleye he catches, the more
he refines his daily pattern, resulting in even more walleye.
What’s really surprising,
though, is that Stange rarely relies on live minnows for bait.
He says they’re too messy, too time-consuming and too cold
on his fingers, especially in mid-January. In fact, he says
that relying solely on live bait is the surest way to reduce
the number of fish you catch, especially big walleye.
Instead, Stange attributes his
remarkable ability to catch winter walleye to two specific types
of lures: short, heavy, flashy spoons and metal, minnow-like
swimming baits. Use them properly and there’s no reason
why you, too, can’t master winter walleye. 
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