Our number one sought after gamefish does truly receive honours on the dinner table but fails miserably when it comes to rational thinking and decision making. All fish including our beloved Walleye are creatures of habit, instinct and reactions. Not many brains here and very little memory.
If you can find "Mr Walleye", you can make him strike! Sometimes easier said than done, but our creature of instinct and habit is very predictable.
After natures drive to reproduce sets him free, our fish will seek calmer, deeper parts of a river. If its a lake setting look for the first and closest deeper water adjacent to the spawning site. Spawning sites are those gravely rock shoals or protected hard bottom bays usually in 3 - 10 feet of water.
Just after the spawn, the fish go through a recuperation period, a slow process sometimes taking weeks before fully regaining their highly excitable states. It is at this time that only a slow, subtle presentation will fill your creel. A jig coupled with a 3 inch soft curly body that is just large enough to get you to the bottom usually pulls the tricks for me here. Tipping the jig with a live minnow is a must as I try to cover all the bases of the fishes senses.
Very little speed when retrieving this offering is needed. Spinners and spoons with a small minnow or night-crawler attached have worked very well for me here as well. The entire key to success in the early spring is to keep your offering small and work it slow. The fish are there!
As the season progresses towards summer and the fishes activity increases, so may the size and speed of your lure or bait. The fish constantly move towards deeper water and begin to relate to structure such as sandbars, deep rocky points and underwater weedlines. I prefer to troll from a boat as summer approaches thus giving me the opportunity to cover a lot of water. If I pick up a Walleye, I will work the area thoroughly. These are a schooling fish and where there is one there is usually more. A small weighted marker will keep you on your new found hotspot.
During the early parts of summer, I find that lure colour, speed and depth are crucial. There are no set rules that cover the entire province here. Experimentation is the only way to go. If you have three or four people in the boat, everyone should begin fishing with something different and in various sizes and colors. Once you find a school of fish it will be quite easy to determine what they want.
Summertime is structure-time for me. I'll pick out the largest, most obvious shoal or weedbed and begin my efforts there. A large weed-flat (areas where the bottom depth is constant and huge masses of weeds grow) is a magnate to all game fish species including the Walleye, big Walleye! This is when I get out my thin bodied crank-baits (Rattlin Raps, Cordell Spots, Lewis Rattle Traps). As my boat drifts across the large weedflat (at least 10 feet of water) I fan cast in all directions. As I retrieve the crankbait, it must catch the top of the weeds. When this happens, I raise my rod tip high and lower it back down all the while I'm reeling. Similar to a "stop and go" retrieve except I never stop reeling.
If that technique doesn't work I go right for the four inch jigs or six inch weighted rubber worms. I'll begin working the edges slowly and eventually work my way into the thick of things. The fish are there so long as water temperatures are holding the baitfish in the weeds. You just have to put it all together.
If the weed-flat or weed-line is in less than 10 feet of water, the walleye may not move into the area from deeper water until the sun gets low on the horizon and they will still be there at the crack of dawn.
One body of water that has broken all the rules is the Great Lake Erie. It has an estimated population of 25 million walleye. The majority of these fish suspend to feed and do not relate to any structure. In the western basin of Erie anglers drift their boat and cast weight forward spinners (Erie Dearies) tipped with night-crawlers. They sink at a constant rate therefore by counting one may repeatedly put the lure at the same depth each time you cast out and retrieve. The trick is finding at what depth the fish are holding. It doesn't take long!
This is a technique that I have never been able to make work on Lake St Clair for some reason. Maybe it's because Lake St Clair is relatively shallow. It seems to be somewhat unique to Lake Erie. Give it a try on your favorite lake and if it works, I sure would like to know about it.
