Fishing Northern WI I us cheap $1.00 wallyworld spinner baits. When the skirt gets ripped off I thread on a yellow or white twin tail plastics about 4-5" overall again wallyworld cheapies. We work shallow weed beds and drop offs running up to them. Sunny days seem to be better than dull but you never know. But I've had drizzly days that my arms got tired catching northerns, most run in the 20-30" size but you get them over 40" fairly often. We keep them over 5 LBs for eating. I can fillet them boneless and still have a one piece fillet. The solid white, large flaked meat is better than walleyes as far as I'm concerned, breaded and fried they are great but our favorite is a German recipe where they are boiled in spices/onions and served with browned butter poured over them, steamed potatoes with more browned butter and sweet/saur red cabbage.
We never bother with leaders as the spinner baits usually lip hook them. I run 12-14 lb. test mono line, the hardest part is trying to drag them up out of the weeds when they dive and burrow into them. We lose some when they do that, the spinner bait gets tangled and the northern can spin off the hook. Sometimes they come up with so much weed on them you can't tell theirs a fish in the mess.
