Ebijack,

I agree with everything you said... except the part about the radio. While I don't enjoy even having it turned on, it is invaluable if you know who is talking. If Skipper9 or one of the Eyehunter Charters, or Spoonfeeder or Pooh Bear, BudMan, Sarah J, etc.... says something then it's worth listening to. I can't tell you the number of times that one of the great walleye fishermen on here has saved my day by talking on the radio... But I agree, there is a lot of junk talk on there too.

The other thing that I would point out is that you are absolutely correct... However, not everyone has the ability to go out and run 16 rods and have 4 different variations of 4 different baits & Lures running in different water columns at the same time. You can go out and run 32 presentation variations in an hour. Us guys that are solo with 2 rods at a time, and maybe 4 if we have a buddy on board don't have that luxury. Many guys don't have the setup to run 16 rods either. I don't know if you actually run 16 rods or not, but many guys do. Even if it's 10-12 rods then you can go out and get something dialed in. It is a LOT more difficult with 2 rods.

I also agree that shape and size matter. But I also can tell you that there are way too many times that we throw some strange lure on to see what happens and something that we would usually use as a Bass bait, and we catch just as many fish on it as the "Hot" lures we are running and sometimes more.

I also don't own a single P10, mainly because I don't think it matters. This year when everyone was catching on P10's, we went out a limited in 3 hours with 5 guys running RR. A lot of the people that had boxes full of RR went out and bought P10s. I also don't have any interest in running P10's because I don't like messing with the line as it comes in and unsnapping weights.

My point was not to say that if you drag a bare hook through the water, or simply a piece of Styrofoam then you will catch fish, no, not at all... My point was that for someone that is coming up for a weekend by themselves or a couple buddies that have 2-3 guys and can only fish for a few days, then it may be worth while to grab whatever anyone else is using so you can dial it in the first hour on the Lake and not have a 2 day learning curve.

When I am running the common lure that everyone else is doing, I can drive up to the Lake and get on the water at 9:00 am... Get on the radio and simply say, "Does anyone have a good lead length?" and I'll get several responses like, "60 Back" and I'm catching fish within the first hour I'm out there... Sure we run different depths too, and check different water columns (though we would NEVER run anymore than 2 rods a person!) the entire time we are fishing... As much as I love going out and figuring out my own program, and finding fish all on my own without any help or numbers... I love having the ability to go out and start catching right away and I don't really care that I got a program from someone else... I would assume that most people reading this forum for information on how and where to catch walleye are worried about being able to go home and say that they got to spend the first 2 days of a 3 day trip "dialing it in."

Does size, shape, color matter? Absolutely! Does it matter as much as a lot of guys think it does?? I don't think so.

-Matt