Outdoors with Larry Dablemont: Walleye time

Walleye are a different kind of fish! They may not always be in deep water, but they are almost always close to the bottom. If you are serious about walleye fishing, you have to give it some effort; walleye don't often come easy in our waters. And the time for that effort is now. Successful walleye fishermen in the Ozarks begin to catch them as they prepare to spawn.  The first of the walleye spawn takes place in late February into early March and many of them will have finished by April.

If there's plenty of water, they move up the tributaries and streams at the slightest warming of the currents that call them. If there isn't plenty of water in those creeks and rivers, they will move to rocky points and rip-rap near dams and bridges and spawn there.  Northern fishermen spend more time fishing vertically for walleye than they do casting for them. 

Sometimes they find the schools by trolling for them, and then when they locate a fish or two, they go back and drop a jig tipped with a minnow down to the bottom and lift it up and down only a couple of feet off the bottom. When a walleye takes a lure fished vertically, he seldom hits it very hard; you just start to lift the jig and feel the weight of the fish.

Some of the best walleye fishing I have ever had was on the Mississippi River in March, up near the Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois corners, fishing below the locks and dams, drifting in the current. We were vertically fishing 1/2-inch blue and white jigs tipped with big minnows. To keep the minnows on, you would run the hook through the mouth, out the gill and then through the back under the dorsal fin. That day, we must have caught twenty big walleye between the three of us, up to eight pounds, and all over three pounds.

You can catch walleye that way in the winter on Bull Shoals, Norfork, Stockton and Truman lakes, fishing points and deep channels around standing timber. But in March, if you fish the same way in creeks and rivers which feed the same reservoirs with lots of persistence you can have some success. Walleye stage in the deeper holes and eddies below shoals in March, and they feed better early and late in the day and even at night. They spawn at night, moving up to that shallower swift water where the eggs are fertilized and roll in the current.

One old-time walleye fisherman on the Little Red River in Arkansas, which feeds Greers Ferry Lake, (where walleye over twenty pounds have been taken) told me that he catches huge walleye at night from the Little Red River in the wake of the first couple of big spring storms which come through. He says those storms, which accompany the first warm spells in early March, quickly raise the water temperature, and walleye come up to stage at the foot of the shoals. He finds them there and catches them on large chubs and minnows and even bluegill. His favorite bait is small bluegill.

Walleye, as the late winter progresses into early spring, will also hit crank-baits, and the long-billed, narrower ones are the best producers, on Stockton, Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes. Use yellow and red and chartreuse combinations.

Every year with the first good fishing weather in late February and early March—meaning whatever temperatures I can stand—I fish tributaries to the lakes for white bass, black bass and walleye. Sometimes the other species are much easier to find, but it is the walleye which I treasure because they are so good to eat. I went after a big walleye in the Sac River a few years ago with the same jig and minnow combination I have used so often with good success in Canada.

I concentrated my efforts on a deep pool below a shoal and sure enough, I got the fish on I had been hoping for. He was heavy and fought like a walleye of ten or twelve pounds, staying deep and lunging long and hard. I handled him like a master and in about ten minutes brought him up to the surface. And he was a beautiful silver-blue instead of the walleye gold and bronze I had been looking for. It was a huge drum, about fifteen pounds.

I am going to try the same technique again in early March, here and there, where walleye ought to be. I know I'll catch some bass and white bass and maybe another drum or two, but there might someday be a horse of a walleye in one of those places. I caught an eleven-pound walleye years ago in Manitoba. I just know I can get a bigger one somewhere if I keep at it.  The time to do it is upon us.