It seems as though there is a consensus here that matching the forage base and being in the right location are the most important parts of catching big fish. I would agree. Big fish will definitely eat big lures, this is true but you need to be where they are and you need to match what they are eating. One of my best days ever for pike and walleye happened on sturgeon lake several years ago. I was fishing with my father, and while we were trolling around catching the odd pike, we noticed schools of baitfish balling up and breaking the surface. I had seen this before on the ocean but never in a lake. As I had the flyrod rigged up with a small minnow pattern on it, I chucked it out and first cast, I caught a larger than average walleye. We had a blast for the rest of the evening just following these bait balls around the lake catching a bunch of larger walleye and pike, me on the flyrod and my dad casting a small soft minnow bait. These minnows were small (2 inches) but the larger fish were suckin them down like candy.
Find the location, match the food base, and you will catch large fish. And yes, sometimes this will mean using larger baits, lures, or flies.
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