Spinning The River by Marshall Wuensch Many anglers think that crawler harnesses are a lake only technique. This could not be farther from the truth. Harnesses excel in rivers from late spring to late fall. I'll help you understand how to make the transition. There are only a few alterations required to crawler harnesses to make them river ready. The most challenging alterations will be lure sizes and weights. You typically do not have to account for current on lakes and reservoirs, but on the river you do. The current will make using your lure dive charts more difficult. The first thing I do to make a crawler harness river ready is to tie it to a three way swivel and add a weight. I usually use pencil weights to help cut down on snags. I'll typically run a weight in the 1 oz and up range to make sure that I can troll the harness at .5 to 1.8 mph and still make bottom contact occasionally. I rig these on rods with line counters so I can see how much line it takes to maintain decent bottom contact. I will then set my lure depth by dividing the amount of line by the water depth to get a line per foot of depth estimate. This is pretty accurate and can be retested in a moment's time. Trolling harnesses downstream has produced many large Walleyes over the years. Most anglers use their trolling motors to move slightly faster than the current. In high water situations, you may not need to propel the boat at all; the current is often fast enough to make the blade spin. Other places to troll harnesses on rivers include, in front of feeding structures such as wing dams, closing dams, rock piles, current breaks, eddy's, and in running sloughs. As the summer progresses, the fish will begin to congregate in the areas listed above. My personal favorite summer harness trolling location is along the faces of wing dams on the Mississippi River in Western Wisconsin . One other slight change I usually make to harnesses is using two hook snells without treble hooks on them. The treble hook will often snag up on the rough river bottoms. I find that size 2 and 4 octopus hooks tend to work best for a low snag presentation. Running planer boards and harnesses can be effective on rivers this time of year as well. Remember that rivers are much more narrow and you will likely not have the same depth too far on either side of the boat. Most river board fishing will happen within 25 feet of the boat. Remember your box of blades and beads next time you hit the river. You won't regret it.

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