Year in Review: What Did the Walleye Teach You?

Year in Review: Lessons From Walter

Whether you fished 50 times this year…or 150 times…or just 5 times, it’s almost impossible NOT to learn something from these wise old walleyes. More than any other fish I’ve targeted,  thick-skin walleyes make me think about what I’m doing and more importantly WHY I’m doing it.

Some folks learn more and more about their favorite walleye tactic becoming true experts while others learn just enough to be dangerous with a range of different approaches. Some anglers have the goal of filling limits for upcoming fish tacos, thus requiring knowledge about finding numbers of eaters. I’m in another group that limits me to caring only about bigger ‘eyes and whatever it takes to find and catch ‘em.

Last week a customer looked at a picture of a recent trophy I’d caught and asked, “Still crankbaiting?” The fish was caught on December 22, which is typically jig season for me. I told him, “Jig fish—fan casting” to which he replied, “Good boy” As if fishing anything other than a jig was somehow akin to being a leather-clad, drug-addled Misfits fan walking around singing “Die, Die, Die” under my breath. At least he didn’t try to pat me on the head!

I’m going to be blunt…If the big fish bite is going strong using live Shetland ponies with garbage can lids for spinners on logging cable tied to a telephone pole, you can be certain that I’ll have a barge full of ponies behind my boat for bait. Couldn’t care less what tactic the fish want me to use--whatever the big girls want—if it’s legal I’ll not only use it but I’ll embrace it and try to learn everything I can. Do Shetland ponies work better when shod or unshod? Should the mane be trimmed? And of course, the usual fishing question, “What color are they biting on?”

So while I truly enjoy many walleye fishing methods, I’m one of those guys who just doesn’t care if I’m using a tactic that’s enjoyable. Back in the ‘90’s I made an awful lot of tournament dough dragging around various presentations behind planer boards. Gawd I hate planer board fishing! But I was tournament fishing and the goal was “more and bigger fish” which, at times, the planer boards provided. So, I just gritted my teeth, flexed my wallet for appropriate planer board gear and went and caught fish! (And cashed nice checks too!)

Back to the point, other than using Shetland pony spinner rigs, what did you learn about catching walleyes this year? It’s not too late to analyze some of your past trips. To help you get into your school uniform I’ll relate a couple good lessons I learned this year.

First lesson ties to my own distaste for fishing featureless flats. Don’t get me wrong, I love fishing flats because walleye love feeding on flats, but I have a hard time aimlessly fishing around a flat with nothing to focus the fish or my fishing. A weed edge is a wonderful focus zone on a flat, as is a lip or small breakline at a particular depth—old shoreline from a lower water level or something.

The delayed spring last year really hampered my early mud-flat fishing. Hell, areas I like to catch postspawn fish in April in 4 feet of water were still frozen and when it thawed the fish just weren’t cruising the flats like I expected. So, I started searching for some sort of breakline or edge to follow, and what I found is something I hadn’t spent enough time on in the past. I found a very noticeable gravel line that happened to be at a reasonable early spring depth of 4 feet. Now this was not a bottom transition where one type of bottom met another—which is an important thing to seek in many walleye waters. This was a small ridge of mostly gravel and occasional rocks that had been pushed up or dropped off by ice from the thaw. 

Any time you are fishing a reservoir with seasonal changes in water level, you’ll typically find shallow mud or sand flats criss-crossed by the effects of ice the previous winter. The right wind-storm pushing the ice can create scours with 6 inch deeper “holes” or it can concentrate 2 inch gravel “ridges” in an otherwise mostly muddy or sandy zone. Because the gravel lines were not visible on sonar as a change of bottom hardness I had to locate these gravel zones partly by the 2 inch uptick in the depth readings. Or I had to locate the gravel with my rod while fishing. In this case I was fishing this flat with plain-hook bait presentations with ultra-light finesse bottom bouncers, my favorite way to present bait to walleyes.

Once I found the subtle line of gravel and what depth it meandered through, I was onto immediate fish on an otherwise fishless day.  When I returned a week later the lake level had risen 3 feet! So after getting skunked for an hour in the 4 foot zone, I headed 3 feet deeper. And there at 7 feet I found the line of gravel and also found the walleyes…no trophies, but fish up to 8+ pounds. Fishing an ice-effect in April and May open water…that was a learning experience for me! 

Quick Tackle Tip: Finesse Bouncer--The Better Bouncer--More Bottom Feel than Harvey Weinstein

Designed for high sensitivity fishing as a “bottom feeler”. It’s a Western alternative to the Lindy Rig with better snag resistance and better ability to stand upright dragging bait just inches above bottom. A good finesse bouncer features extra thick stainless steel wire--so stiff it isn't “bendy.” That way these finesse sinkers telegraph the bottom composition instead of absorbing it like the springy light-wire bouncers. The stainless steel wire on my bouncers is .44 gauge...that's thick!

For the ultra-shallow spring flats bite, I take these stout ½ ounce bouncers and lighten them with a blow-torch melting off about half the lead. That way they’ll be light enough to fish in under 6 feet of water and still telegraph the bottom composition quite noticeably. If your current bottom bouncers don’t tell you the bottom composition easily and every second, you may want to up your game with a more sensitive version.

I’ve cashed tournament checks on several national walleye circuits using finesse bouncers as my delivery system for plain hook crawler or plain hook leech presentations. Once you try ‘em you’ll never tolerate using a “limp-wire” bottom bouncer again.

Big Pauses

Another lesson the “Where’s Waldo” walleyes taught me this year is a lesson I’ve been expanding on each year during the fall jig season. We all know how important jigging cadence is…fast jigging, sweep strokes, popping strokes, dangling a vertical jig a foot above bottom for a bit…Just like ice anglers, we late fall cold water jiggers constantly try to determine the best “trigger” to get the fish to bite. Well, I’ve gotten to the point that once the water drops below 40 degrees I like to fan-cast with long pauses. That's a big change from decades of vertical jigging in cold water--a tactic I still like and use...but not much when the water gets really cold.

If you know me then you know that I’m pretty high-strung and long pauses in my jigging cadence isn’t exactly a good fit for my personality. So I’ve had to find a method that will truly slow me down and keep my jigging “calm” enough to get bit by sluggish walleyes. Last year I started counting to 3 between jig strokes. If I don’t actually count, but just try to pause, in mere minutes my jigging is blazing along like it’s June in 55 degree “hot” water.

My Prettiest Walleye Ever! Nice 12.36 pounder Hit on a 4-Count While Fan-Casting Jigs on December 22

This past December I was on a really consistent bite on the three count…I was finding plenty of chunky eaters and a 4-6 pounder every 2-3 hours. Then it ended. Couldn’t buy a bite from my top two spots…so I went to a 4 count and on the second cast…woo hoo, 12.36 pounder. And the most beautiful perfect specimen of a walleye I’ve ever caught. Added a 4.87 pounder and three perfect 17 inch eaters…all on the 4 count. That was December 22 in 34 degree water. Would those fish have bit on a 3 count? Perhaps, but they didn't bite prior to the longer count... The boat ramp coves had frozen a couple times already but reopened from some nice Chinook winds. The fish were available the entire fall, but required me to slow down so they could slurp the jig up off the bottom (funny, I was primarily using a Northland Slurp jig). So, finding walleye that want to pick jigs up off the bottom is nothing new, especially in the late fall—that’s why stand-up style jig heads even exist (though I don’t use them often). But having to give walters that much time to look at it sitting there first, that’s new and non-traditional jigging for me. And I don’t start my count as soon as I stroke the jig. No, I wait until the jig thunks back onto bottom THEN start a slow count…like a ref at a wrestling match…full one second counts!

Yes, learning can be painful and jigging with 4 second pauses is agonizingly, torturously slow. But hey, for me walleye fishing is all about catching bigger than average fish. I don’t get to choose how to catch big walleyes. That’s completely up to the fish. So whether they want to be “wet rag” shallow on gravel or sluggishly slow to bite or preferring their Shetland ponies to have flowing manes, my job is to be open-minded enough to learn the lessons the fish are teaching. The rest is just “getting the net.”