Walleyes can bite short, particularly when the water is ice cold as it is in early spring. When fishing a classic jig and minnow presentation, this often results in missed strikes. The use of a stinger hook, a secondary hook that pierces the body of the minnow, can be the answer.

“I use a stinger hook when the fish tell me to,” said Jon Thelen, a tested walleye pro and guide from Minnesota. “This means when I miss a couple fish that leave me with a scaled or a half of a minnow.”

Matching the right stinger hook with a certain size minnow is a key to using a stinger hook properly, Thelen said. He likes the stinger to stick the minnow around the dorsal fin.

“That way it is not impairing the action given off by the minnow’s tail when I imply the jigging stroke,” Thelen said. “And most often a walleye’s initial bite is at least as far up the minnow as the dorsal fin, putting the stinger hook in optimum position.”

Thelen likes using a grub-bodied jig like the classic Lindy Fuzz-E-Grub, feeling that the bulkier body jig provides a target that persuades the fish to hit further up on the offering. He uses a two-inch Lindy Stinger Snell for smaller minnows like fatheads, and the three-inch Stinger Snell for larger minnows like rainbow chubs.

Legendary Northwoods Guide Tom Neustrom too knows the benefits of using stinger-hooked leadhead jigs.

“The only time that I will choose to use a stinger is usually with larger minnows, and especially when I get short striked by walleyes and notice that the minnow has those tell-tale rake marks on it,” Neustrom said.

Sometimes Tom makes his ties his own stinger hooks, which he can tailor to the length of the minnow being fished. He also clips one tine of the treble hook, leaving only one exposed tine when the remaining one is embedded in the minnow. This, he says, minimizes picking up weeds and other debris. He sets the hook faster when using a stinger hook.

Commercially produced stinger hooks come in a couple versions, in regard to how they are affixed to the jighead. Lindy’s Stinger Snells, referred to earlier by Thelen, as well as Northland’s Sting’r Hook Rig, have a rubber membrane over the loop. You rig it by piercing the film with the jig’s point, and then slide it down to the turn of the jig hook. The rubber helps keep the loop from sliding around.

When Neustrom opts for store-bought stingers, he uses one of Northland’s products. The company’s series of Fireball jigs are well suited for presenting live bait with a stinger hook. While the short shank of the jig doesn’t allow room for a plastic body, it is a perfect setup for running the jig hook down the minnow’s mouth and out behind its head, a placement more likely to catch short-striking fish. And if walleyes are missing the main hook, Fireballs come pre-packaged with stinger hooks that clip to a secondary eyelet found behind the main line-tie.

On our local waters I too will bust out stinger hooks, more so when using larger minnows trapped from local creeks. This includes chubs and dace in the three to four inch range.

I fashion my own stinger hooks with 20 pound test fluorocarbon line, a size eight or 10 treble hook, and leader sleeves from AFW (American Fishing Wire). The internal diameter of the sleeve is a tad bigger than the line’s thickness. First tie on the hook, then the other end of the line is run through the sleeve, then doubled back through the sleeve a second time creating a loop.

Once this is accomplished tie a simple overhand knot as a jam nut to keep it from slipping back through the sleeve. I aim for a total length of around two inches. The stinger loop can be opened and closed, as the line will pass through the leader sleeve.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.