He lumps willowleaf blades into a miscellaneous category with plastic choices. 'Both Colorado and Indiana blades do a great job of creating vibrations and turbulence that lead walleyes to believe they're dealing with a fleeing baitfish,' Thelen adds. Indiana blades are highly versatile, offer good flash and vibration, and excel at medium speeds in fair to high-visibility conditions. Deep-cupped, hard-thumping Colorados have the widest rotation - with a revolution angle around 45 degrees - plus the most distinctive flash and slowest rotation of the two. Likewise, enterprising anglers were applying the tactic in situations once deemed off limits to spin doctors.Īs for blade style, he keeps it simple, typically switching between standard Colorado and Indiana shapes. By the turn of the century, the creative floodgates had opened, leaving walleye fans with an amazing variety of blades large and small, components, and pre-tied rigs at their disposal. Thanks to the Red Devil's success, further spinner refinements followed, with an emphasis on small, light, free-wheeling blades that twirled at slow trolling speeds. In a nod to spinner-rigging's roots, there's also a Heart-Of-Steel option that features a snell spun from nylon-coated steel. The Red Devil also persisted and remains an integral part of the Little Joe lineup, available outfitted with a variety of blade sizes and colors, in single- and two-hook options. While wire diehards thought the mono concept heresy, the idea caught on and continues catching fish to this day. The Red Devil matched a 30-inch, 25-pound mono leader with a trim, easy-spinning, high-quality blade, and was wickedly effective on walleyes in a variety of situations. Another new twist hit the market in the early 1960s, when Little Joe unveiled the first spinner rig marketed with a monofilament leader - the now legendary Red Devil. By the time World War II was winding down, anglers not embattled in the trenches fueled a trend toward lighter spinners on wire rigs, such as the Mille Lacs Free Spin and Prescott Pike Hook #2.

Walleye spinner blade size chart