First-Freeze Walleyes On Featureless Lakes

by Daniel Quade
from The Fishing Wire

A shout echoes unanswered across the barren icepack of Minnesota’s massive Upper Red Lake. It’s hardly a call for help, much less a greeting. It’s veteran walleye guide Jonny Petrowske, proving a point about getting away from the crowd to corral first-ice ‘eyes.

“If I yell at the top of my lungs and no one hears me, I’m far enough away from other anglers,” he grins.

Catch big walleye

Petrowske says that even aggressive walleyes get skittish when clamorous hordes of winter warriors overrun the ice. Since the only reply to his thunderous vociferations was the raspy, disapproving cackle of a raven drifting overhead, it appears we’re good to go.

We’re targeting early winter walleyes shortly after the mighty lake’s surface has solidified. Shallow and relatively featureless, Upper Red is typical of many fisheries that are first to freeze, and first to offer a chance at hardwater walleyes.

“It’s largely devoid of structure,” Petrowske said, “so the walleyes are nomadic, wandering vast flats looking for food.”

Catching them calls for two things, he says, finding the fish, and then not spooking them once we do.

“Since there’s nothing tying them to small area, they won’t tolerate the sound of your feet shuffling around above their heads.”

With nearly 50,000 acres at our disposal on the state-managed section of Upper Red, we have an intimidating amount of territory to cover. Petrowske quickly narrows it down to forage-rich shallows within a mile of shore.

“Depending on the lake, such areas offer walleyes everything from emerald shiners and young-of-the-year yellow perch to frogs and other forage,” he says. “Water depths of 4- to 8-feet are ideal. On lakes with slow-tapering bottoms, the search area may stretch a mile or more from the bank.”

Beginning far from shore over the deepest part of our chosen hunting grounds, Petrowske punches a string of holes spaced at 1/8-mile intervals all the way back to the shallows. At each stop, he augers a pair of portals to the underwater world 6- to 7-feet apart to allow for fishing two presentations simultaneously. Since silence is golden, he drills all of the holes in one fell swoop, which gives all spots except the last drop zone time to quiet down.

After deftly skimming away the slush from our first hole, Petrowske pulls out a 28-inch ice rod spooled with 6-lb-test, high-visibility monofilament. A study in compromise, the blank is medium-action.

“If the rod is too stiff, your jigging motions can get herky-jerky,” he says. “If it’s too soft and you exert a lot of energy bending the rod, the bait barely moves.”

Use small lures for big walleye

A small ant swivel links the mainline to an 18-inch, 6-lb fluorocarbon leader. The swivel fights twist, while the fluoro battles abrasion and is less visible to the fish. At the end of the line he ties a Lindy Darter, a hard-bodied rattler that’s raucous on the uptake and swims on the fall.

“Not all noise is bad,” admits Petrowske. “Walleyes are curious and often check out something that sounds like a meal. And, since we’re focused on scattered fish, the ability to call them in is key when fishing a vast, featureless lake like this.”

Although the fertile water is decidedly less than gin clear, he opts for natural lure colors that mimic the lake’s forage base. Natural Perch is his favorite, but Yellow Perch and various shiner patterns are good, too. On cloudy or snowy days, brighter patterns with a touch of chartreuse get the nod.

With a plop Petrowske’s Darter drops into the ice water and quickly swims to bottom on a slack line. After tightening the tether, he twitches the rodtip several times to tap-dance the bait on bottom, generating slight puffs of sediment. Next, he raises the lure 6 inches and pauses. He says that this pause often triggers a strike.

If it doesn’t, he begins phase two. Gently swim the lure up a foot, just fast enough to lightly engage the rattles, let it fall, then lift again.

If you’ve never fished a Darter before, he recommends practicing various lifts and drops within sight of the surface. Such swimming lessons are invaluable for learning how different jig-strokes affect the lure.

Petrowske’s final performance before pulling up stakes starts off wildly animated.

“I rip the heck out of it,” he laughs, explaining that the routine includes three or four sharp lifts of 12 to 18 inches, followed by a pause. “If that fails, but I think there are fish around, I slowly jiggle the lure upward until I can see it in the hole, then open the bail so it swims off to the side and crashes like a B-52.”

After the lure touches down, he reels slowly, crawling it along bottom.

“When it gets directly beneath the hole, I raise it 6 inches and pause,” he says. He credits this “reset” maneuver to fellow guide Jon Thelen, who developed it to turn watchful ‘eyes into biters. “If that doesn’t do it, I head to the next pair of holes.”

When Petrowske pinpoints a pod of active fish, he deploys a set-line in the second pre-drilled hole. The rig consists of a lively minnow tail-hooked on a jig or jigging spoon and suspended 8 to 12 inches off bottom beneath a bobber.

“Lindy’s Rattl’n Flyer Spoon, Frostee and Frostee Spoon are my favorite lures,” he says, noting that slip-floats with large metal grommets, such as members of Thill’s Pro Series lineup, limit ice buildup.

Strung with 4-pound Silver Thread Trout Line or AN40, the bobber rod tempts hungry ‘eyes that were lured in by Petrowske’s jigging theatrics, but not tempted enough to strike. It’s one more ploy in his bag of tricks for taking first-freeze walleyes in shallow, featureless lakes.

Wobble Bobbin’ Slip Bobber Fishing for Walleyes

by Daniel Quade
from The Fishing Wire

Complex presentations get plenty of press these days, but few walleye tactics are as deadly-or as easy to fish-as the simple slip-bobber rig. With a well-balanced float, you can efficiently and precisely suspend mouthwatering live bait in front of hungry ‘eyes. Plus, you know exactly when a fish has inhaled your bait.

Guide Mike Christensen

Veteran guide Mike Christensen is a believer. Big time. From his home base out of historic Hunter Winfield’s Resort on the scenic south shores of Minnesota’s mighty Mille Lacs Lake, the jovial yet dead-serious walleye hunter launches literally hundreds of missions onto the fabled fishery with one goal in mind: connect clients with the big lake’s walleye bounty.

His success rate is epic, and one of his favorite presentations throughout much of the season is, you guessed it, a slip-float rig.

When wind whips the surface, a Thill Pro Series Slip Float rules the waves. He favors the size XXL version, a 1-incher that’s easy to see bobbing amidst the whitecaps. But when the wind dies and surface flattens, he deploys a new secret weapon that livens up his bait in spite of the lull-Thill’s Wobble Bobber.

Fresh on the walleye scene this season, the pear-shaped float rocks back and forth with the slightest ripple or twitch of the rodtip. “It’s ideal for calmer conditions,” he says. “If it’s absolutely dead flat, you can impart action to your bait just by shaking the rod.”

Thanks to an aerodynamic profile and slick internal weighting system, the Wobble Bobber also grabs serious air when slung from standard spinning tackle. Such long-casting properties are perfect for keeping your distance when targeting nervous ‘eyes roaming the shallows. Long casts also make it easy to thoroughly cover a reef or other structure from an anchored position-without moving the boat-and are a huge plus for the shore patrol.

Wobble Bobber

Christensen says the Wobble Bobber is lethal for skinny water walleyes that are patrolling weeds, shallow rockpiles and boulders, or holding on the edge of steep breaks. “I use it in deep water situations as well,” he adds.

When it comes to the deep game, one of the classics is a pattern Christensen and fellow Mille Lacs guide Jon Thelen fondly call “road hunting.” At its core, the tactic involves cruising the tops and slow-tapering edges of promising reefs, mud flats, gravel bars and other promising areas at slow speeds, watching the sonar for signs of active fish hovering a foot or so off bottom.

“These are the biters,” says Christensen. “Bottom-huggers may eat if you park on top of them and wait it out, but we’d rather catch five aggressive walleyes in the time it takes to coax one less-active fish into eating.”

Proper sonar settings are crucial to distinguishing walleyes from clouds of baitfish or insects, as well as smaller fish such as perch. “I set the chart speed, sensitivity and color on my Humminbird sonar so suspended walleyes are identified by yellow highlights inside the arc,” Thelen explains. “On bottom, low-riding fish will have a bluish halo on the sides, while rocks won’t.”

Whether it’s calm or windy, Christensen likes the Wobble Bobber for road hunting because of its ability to deploy 20 to 30 feet of line more quickly than many conventional floats. “It has brass grommets at both ends, so line slides through it fast,” he says. “This is important with this presentation, because you want the bait in the strike zone before an aggressive fish moves off or settles back to bottom.”

His standard road-hunting rig includes a 7½- to 8½-foot spinning outfit. “A rod with a long, sensitive tip is key to good hooksets,” he says, explaining that when a fish pulls the float under water, the limber tip lets you reel up slack until you feel the weight of the fish on the line. “Otherwise, anglers have a tendency to set too soon. And when you try setting the hook before getting all the slack out of the line, you miss the fish.”

Christensen spools with 8-pound green monofilament mainline. After threading on an adjustable bobber stop, he slides on the Wobble Bobber and then ties a swivel to the business end, followed by a four-foot length of the same line. (Note: Christensen says that doubling the line makes it easier to thread through the Wobble Bobber.) A split shot large enough to balance the bobber is pinched on a foot or so beneath the swivel. “This reduces the chances of the rig tangling on the cast or the drop,” he notes.

Leeches are great walleye bait

Another 24 to 30 inches below the shot, he adds a 1/32-ounce Lindy Jig. The leadhead sports a sturdy hook that’s large enough to hold a jumbo leech or half ‘crawler, yet is light enough to rise and fall seductively with the waves, or action imparted by the bobber.

Jigs also offer a more lifelike profile than plain hooks, he adds. “Hooks hang vertical, but I want a horizontal profile, which mimics the natural look of swimming prey,” he explains. While leeches are Christensen’s go-to bait, nightcrawlers often get the nod during bug hatches. “Hook them through the nose and pinch the crawler off halfway down,” he says.

To set the stop, he clips a Thill depth finder to the jig and drops it to bottom. “Set the bobber stop so the jig rides a foot above the fish-not a foot above the bottom,” he continues. “This is important, because active fish are looking up, and they’re far more likely to move up to hit the bait than they are to move down.”

Rigged and ready, Christensen idles over flat-topped feeding structures and gradually tapering edges along their sides. “Steep drops are tough to road hunt, because you have to change the depth of the jig,” he says.

Once a fish is marked, he flips the float directly behind the boat’s transom and pays out line so the jig can quickly reach the fish. “Let the boat drift away, to avoid spooking the fish,” he adds. “If it’s calm, twitch the cork to give the jig a little action.”

If nothing happens within a few minutes, Christensen reels in and moves on. “If they’re going to hit, they do it pretty fast,” he says. “On a good day, about one out of two to three drops results in a fish, so don’t waste time if the fish moves away or decides it’s not in the mood.”

Walleye caught snap jigging

By Nathan Shore
from The Fishing Wire

Snap jigging for walleye is a key technique in late spring and early summer. If you want to catch limits of big walleyes right now, take this guide’s advice and start snapping them up.

Hopping a jig along bottom in the shallows is a favorite tactic of many walleye guides in early spring.

The jig slips into a world of minnows. It rises and drifts, pops and slides. Clearly different, somehow the same, it looks right at home but stands out. It’s getting away, and now it’s not.

“Snap jigging means different things to different people,” says Jeff Sundin, guide with the Early Bird Fishing Guide Service out of Deer River, Minn. “Some call it snap jigging, others ‘rip jigging.’ There’s hopping, popping-it’s never exactly all the same. Put 12 snap jiggers in the room and you’ll get 12 different versions.”

Snap jigging is the act of “popping” a jig so it rapidly darts upward in the water column, then slowly descends back toward the bottom. The fast, escaping baitfish action gets the fish’s attention because an easy meal is getting away, and the fish often strike on the drop. Usually the physical movement is a quick wrist move like snapping a yo-yo back up to your hand, but intensity if modified depending on various factors, including the mood of the fish. During the early season, Sundin likes a softer, shorter snap that doesn’t pull the bait too far from the fish.

Sundin plies his dialed-down version of snap jigging when walleyes are shallow. Classic snap jigging requires heavy stuff, moving quickly and covering water at a fast clip. Sundin, though, isn’t as aggressive as some guys during the early season. He uses a 6 ½-foot, medium-light power spinning rod and 4- to 6-pound line, and tries to keep the boat at or below 1 mph. He also restrains his actual jigging, moving the jig only 5 to 6 inches at a time.

The fish are sometimes in 2 to 4 feet of water, so small, lightweight jigs, often tipped with a minnow, do the job.

Sundin pitches the jig a “comfortable, short distance” when walleyes are in 5 feet of water or less. As the jig sinks, he starts with the rod tip pointing up at 11 o’clock. As it touches bottom, he drops the rod tip to create slack then snaps it back up.

“As soon as I feel the weight of the jig, I stop,” he said. “I’m only popping it 5 to 6 inches off bottom then letting it drift on a semi-tight line with the boat moving slowly. Then, I drop the tip, push slack into the line, and snap it again. When we’re fishing a sand flat, dragging bottom rarely triggers a strike. The guy who gets snagged up the most is the guy catching the fewest fish. The jig may hit bottom, but there’s no requirement to hit bottom. We’re trying to snap it while it’s hovering just off bottom.”

Early walleyes are shallow walleyes. Until surface temperatures hit the mid 60s, walleyes will be where the bait is. After a long, hard winter, baitfish want to be in the warmest available water, which tends to be close to the bank.

Add baitfish spawns into the equation and there’s another reason for shallow walleyes. Shiners and perch are the most important forage in Sundin’s neck of the woods.

“Shiners spawn in spring and they go right up into 2 feet of water,” Sundin said. “When walleyes key on shiners in lakes with big, shallow flats, they move up into water less than 4-feet deep. They’re so shallow you can actually see them.”

The Watsit Jig is among several that work well for the tactic known as “snap-jigging”.
Jig weight is based on where the fish are. At the earliest stages of summer, Sundin is still using 1/8-ounce jigs. He starts out in spring with a 1/16-ounce Lindy Jig tipped with a shiner, rainbow, or fathead in that order of preference. When the water hits the mid 50s and perch are spawning in depths of 4 to 6 feet, he moves up to a 1/8-ounce jig.

“That’s the weight we snap jig with at least 65 percent of the time,” he said. “But when walleyes move out to depths of 10 to 12 feet a little later, we use ¼-ounce heads. If it’s windy, we might go as heavy as 3/8-ounce. At 12 feet you need lighter line to rifle casts farther from the boat so it swings back into that close, comfortable range best for controlling the jig. We keep tipping with minnows, bringing the hook out in the center of the skull. When rigged perfectly, the mouth of the minnow is against the round ball of the jig.”

On wind-swept, sandy lakes with a lot of sand grass and few taller weedlines, Sundin finds walleyes doubling back into the shallows a lot in summer, especially shallow rocks in 4 to 7 feet of water. When this occurs, he often throws a Watsit Jig minus the bait.

“I really like the Watsit more and more the later it gets,” he said. “We snap it in a similar fashion, but we’re trying to imitate crayfish a little more on those shallow rocks. The Watsit has a way of darting forward then falling back in a semi-circle. If you put anything on it, it won’t perform as well. That circling action triggers walleyes without any other incentive required.”

Snap jigging is effective any time walleyes are in relatively shallow water regardless of time of year. Most of the time the only reason the fish are in less than 8 feet of water is because that’s where the food is, so they’re susceptible to a jig popped up right in front of their faces.

Snap, drift, pop. Sounds like a breakfast cereal. But in practice, Sundin’s version of snap jigging is more like Muhammad Ali. It floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.

Walleye Caught Trolling Shadrap

Goose the throttle on your next fishing trip, and you’ll be lapping other anglers as you boat walleye after walleye.

A number 5 Shad Rap is among the favorite lures for the fast troll that James Holst perfers for putting “eater” walleyes in the boat.

“This is a pattern I’ve used for many years to put numbers of eating-size fish in the boat,” says Rapala Pro-Staffer James Holst. “So make sure you try speeding up. For us, it’s just magic.”

Holst, host of In-Depth Outdoors TV on Fox Sports North, is filming a show on Lake Pepin, a wide spot on the Mississippi River south of the Twin Cities, on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border. It’s a sunny, cool late-May afternoon, and he and fellow Rapala pro-staffer Joel Nelson are loading their Skeeter MX 2025’s livewell with eater ‘eyes.

“I don’t have an answer for why these fish respond well to trolling fast, but they do,” Holst says. “We’re spending almost all of our time trolling from two and three-quarters to three miles-an-hour.”

“That’s pretty fast, by most freshwater trolling standards,” Nelson says.

“And we only get faster as that water temperature rises,” Holst notes.

Today, water temps are in the mid-60s. Because that’s still relatively cool for walleyes, Holst says, “the common thought would be you’re going to want to slow down.” But conventional wisdom is often wrong.

“We troll at two miles-per-hour and all we catch is white bass and sheephead,” Holst explains. “We throw a little speed at these fish, and all we catch is walleyes.”

Lots of walleyes.

Holst trolls at up to 3 miles per hour, considered fast in the world of walleye fishing.
“You’re typically going to be able to catch a lot of fish very quickly,” Holst says.

Trophy fish are less frequent with this pattern, “but don’t be surprised if it’s a 25-, 26-inch walleye,” Holst tells Nelson, whose rod is bent in half as he reels in what both anglers suspect is a big sheephead.

But it’s not. It’s a 26-inch walleye, which Holst nets for Nelson.

“Nice work, net man,” Nelson says, before admiring the fat fish and then releasing it.

“You don’t need to keep any big fish, because by the end of the day, we’re going to have all the 16-, 18-, 19-inch fish we’re going to possibly want,” Holst explains to the camera.

“Whether you’re throwing it or trolling it, this bait is as close as you’ll get to finding a sure thing in a tackle box,” he says.

Orange craw has been the best color today. That’s one of three colors Holst calls The Trinity for post-spawn ‘eyes. Perch and firetiger are the others.

“Those three colors really stand heads and tails above everything else as producers, year after year, on this particular body of water,” Holst says.

Line

Because they’re trolling shallow near shoreline cover, Holst and Nelson are pulling six-pound diameter, 20-pound test, Sufix 832 braid.

“We’ve got sticks and stumps, rocks and bumps, and all kinds of things that we’re just bashing these crankbaits into, so that braid is great because it’s very durable,” Holst explains.

And it provides solid hooksets.

“That fish grabs that crankbait, there’s not a lot of stretch in the line, and bang, that’s a really positive hookset,” Holst says.

His Sufix 832’s test strength and diameter is a “critical piece” to Holst’s speed-trolling pattern.

“I can get a lot more dive depth out of these crankbaits if I went with a two- or a three-pound diameter line, obviously, but I don’t want to do that because we’re fishing in such shallow water,” he explains. “I want to get the baits away from the boat.”

Pulling your baits too close to the boat can spook fish.

Rods

To counteract the braid’s lack of stretch, Holst and Nelson are fishing with 10-foot, six-inch St. Croix Eyecon and seven-foot, six-inch St. Croix Tidemaster rods. Both feature soft tips, which “keeps you from ripping those hooks free once you’ve got them hooked up,” Holst explains.

Where and when

Though most walleyes caught trolling fast are 15 to 18 inches, occasionally a whopper crashes the party.
Lake Pepin is a “troller’s dream body of water” on which to speed-troll Shad Raps, Holst says, because it features few sharp breaks and a bottom composed primarily of sand and mud.

“So it’s a really easy area to troll in one direction for a long time,” he explains. “The depths don’t change a lot and it makes this body of water perfectly applicable for trolling techniques, because … the fish are going to be very spread out due to the lack of structure.”

The pattern is not specific to Lake Pepin, however, and will work throughout the Upper Midwest.

“I’ve used this on Mille Lacs Lake, Lake of the Woods, just about everywhere you go this time of the year, after the spawn when the water temperatures start to warm up,” Holst says. “You get to that mid-65-degree water temperature, and fish – walleyes particularly – are very susceptible to a No. 5 Shad Rap trolling presentation.”

The pattern will remain effective through mid-June, when water levels generally drop and pull fish off shoreline breaks. If water levels remain high, however, the bite will persist.

As water temperatures rise through June, Holst will increase his trolling speed. By the time the pattern slows, he’ll be pulling his Shad Raps at 3.5 to 3.75 miles-per-hour.

“You’re covering water so fast that it’s incredibly efficient,” Holst says. “You’re covering so much ground at that speed putting baits in front of so many fish, you’re bound to load the boat.”

“So definitely give that some consideration,” Holst concludes. “If you want practice reeling in fish, this is the bite. You’re going to be busy.”

Greg Huff is an outdoors writer and video producer based in Minneapolis, MN. He has written for and produced videos for In-Depth Outdoors, Bassmaster.com, Fishhound.com and North American Fisherman’s FishingClub.com.

Catch walleye like this on crankbaits

Trolling, rigging and jigging are great ways to put walleyes in the boat, but when conditions are right, casting shad-bodied crankbaits to shallow structure knows no equal for racking up big numbers of early summer ‘eyes.

North Dakota guide Jason Feldner likes shallow running crankbaits for walleyes from early spring through the month of June.
Just ask Jason Feldner, proprietor of Perch-Eyes Guide Service. A veteran guide who earns his keep connecting clients with walleyes on North Dakota’s 160,000-acre Devils Lake, he casts cranks to fish-rich banks from the first warm fronts of spring throughout the month of June.

“When the bite’s on, 100-fish days are possible,” he says.

And the good news is, even though the sprawling High Plains paradise Feldner calls home is a bit unique, the tactics he employs here work wonders on a variety of other walleye waters as well.

As water temperatures inch upward into the mid-50s, Feldner targets sheltered, fast-warming shallows, where hungry ‘eyes find a feast of baitfish, freshwater shrimp and other food items.

On Devils Lake, rising water levels have in recent years created an almost endless supply of such environments. While few fisheries offer exactly the same opportunities, you can in most systems find concentrations of shallow fish feeding somewhere. Potential hotspots include necked-down current areas, emerging weedbeds and shoreline riprap.

As the water continues warming, Feldner factors the wind into his fishing locations.

“Once the water temp hits the 60s, I look for windswept areas where wave action stirs up the shallows, concentrating forage and reducing light penetration,” he says. Opportunistic ‘eyes quickly move in to scarf up shrimp and minnows, but a sustained wind lasting several days or more can really fire up a shoreline.

When planning his daily structural hit list, he always keeps yesterday’s weather in mind. A lot of times he gets a strong wind one day, then dead calm the next. The downwind bank is good when the wind is blowing, but even after it dies down, the shoreline that got pounded the day before stills hold fish.

Certain structure is central to both temperature-related and wind-driven scenarios.

“I prefer slow-tapering shorelines over banks with steep breaks,” he says. “Not necessarily because they hold more fish, but because my bait stays in the strike zone longer on a gradual slope.”

In the early season, soft muck bottoms absorb sunlight and help boost the water temperature. But later, shorelines exposed to the prevailing winds are typically dominated by gravel and rocks. Flooded woody cover-in the form of trees and brush-is also a common occurrence on Devils Lake, as it is on manmade reservoirs and flowages across the Walleye Belt. Feldner frequently plays the timber card, too, targeting walleyes in and around the shallow treeline.

“During the early season, I cruise the bank, targeting fallen trees,” he says, explaining that walleyes often tuck tight to such timber, lurking in the shade as they await passing prey. “You won’t catch a bunch of fish in one area, but you’ll get one here and one there, so it’s important to cover water and keep moving.”

Shad-bodied crankbaits are another pillar of the program. Like walleyes in most waters, Devils Lake fish eat a variety of forage, from shrimp to juvenile yellow perch and white bass. A crankbait’s deep, stout profile mimics a range of prey, and is easy for walleyes to home in on in low-visibility conditions, such as when wind and waves roil near-shore waters.

The Lindy Shadling and Bomber Flat A are two of Feldner’s go-to baits. Both the Shadling and Flat A are tight-wiggling, rattling baits capable of drawing the ire of nearby ‘eyes, even when visibility is reduced. Another key attribute-their near-buoyancy allows them to be fished with a variety of moves, without rocketing to the surface on the pause. Such versatility is critical, because Feldner’s presentations run the gamut-from a steady pull to ultra-animated retrieve-depending on the mood of the fish.

With his boat hovering in eight feet of water, Feldner makes a long cast close to shore, then works the bait along bottom back to the boat.

“Start with the rodtip high, then lower it during the retrieve, so the bait dives deeper and stays close to bottom,” he notes.

Given walleyes’ notoriously fickle nature, experimentation is key to finding the best retrieve for the situation at hand. Every day is a little different. Sometimes they want it slow and steady, other times you have to get aggressive and really pound bottom or burn it along to trigger reaction strikes.

The shallow crank-casting pattern shines through early summer, until water temperatures reach the 70-degree mark. After that, Feldner typically focuses his efforts a bit deeper, often pulling deep-diving cranks or spinner rigs along outside weed edges and deep treelines. But even then, the shallow pattern is always an option, should the right wind come up along a slow-tapering shore.

Tony Roach caught this big walleye

You could say we northerners sometimes migrate with the geese, or more like snowbirds, to places far from the frosted lands. No doubt, the warm sun on one’s back is reward enough, but for many anglers, it’s the pursuit of openwater alternatives that lure us southward. For me, even a week or two below the Ice Belt recharges my fishing soul and preps me for the final few weeks of ice fishing.

This past November, veteran walleye chasers Mark Brumbaugh, Tony Roach and I had the opportunity to track walleyes in Arkansas. We were like three giddy kids, knowing the potential and possibilities that lurked in Lake Ouachita. Trailering down, our big Lund Pro-V’s became our navigational chariots. But before embarking, we did what all intuitive anglers should – we got a pep talk and mini seminar from a deeply entrenched local.

In this case, it was the guiding icon, Jerry Bean. He’s an approachable southern gentleman and mountain of a man. Shaking his hand is like being on the wrong end of a vice grip. Jerry is a guide’s-guide that knows every inch of Lake Ouachita, every nook and cranny that walleye hide throughout the year. Mark and I had the distinct pleasure of sharing an afternoon on the reservoir with Jerry. We became his students, realizing that we were far from home and needed to listen intensely to the Lake Ouachita professor. Both Mark and I are walleye veterans with deep knowledge of the sacred species, but we were there to listen, learn, and absorb.

Jerry opened by expressing how essential it is to locate pods of baitfish – shad – that can range as deep as 50-feet. Besides the points and inside turns that Mark and I were familiar with from fishing northern natural lakes, we came to learn that flooded stands of trees and brushpiles, even random groupings, were magnets for baitfish and walleyes in the vastness of Lake Ouachita. There are also monster striped bass that patrol the same food-forests, adding potential shock and awe with light tackle.

Fishing wood can be tricky and Jerry has found that heavy jigging spoons (1/2-ounce plus) effectively imitate native baitfish with their flash and wobble. That, and staying vertical is critical in the presence of so much lumber. With a watchful eye on his electronics, Jerry puts that spoon right in the grill of these often suspended fish with the accuracy of William Tell on the apple. My personal pick for spooning in such situations is a Luhr-Jensen Crippled Herring.

When vertically fishing spoons at a multitude of depths, it’s essential to get better feel and control by using a high-sensitivity braid. Suffix 832 is the choice of many, including Jerry, as it lays comfortably on the spool and transmits feel better than anything else in the bait shop. We all agreed that attaching a section of fluorocarbon leader – 18 to 24 inches – with an InvisaSwivels softens the hookset while eliminating line twist, too.

Mark and I barraged Jerry with questions about what other techniques could turn these southern walleyes. Being a lifelong student himself, Jerry said he experiments with presentations learned from walleye articles and tricks picked up from customers from the north.

Two of his mainstay presentations, when not jigging vertically, are running bottom-bouncers with spinners and fresh kept crawlers from a Frabill Crawler Crib; and jig fishing with minnow-imitating plastics, like Trigger X Action baits. Jerry states that all three have their place in his arsenal depending on time of year and fish preferences, which we all know can change by the day.

With so much timber and brush on the bottom of Lake Ouachita, and other neighboring reservoirs, the bottom-bouncer and crawler combo makes for a nasty, snag-stopping trolling pattern that Mark and I are intimately familiar with. We shared some insider information with Jerry on color selection and blade sizes, as well as trolling speeds.

Mark expanded the conversation, talking about the trolling-board techniques that he is so well known for. We talked about jig presentations and Jerry let us know he preferred jig fishing early in the season for walleyes over and around points, creek arms, and sunken islands near shoreline breaks. And there’s the nearly certain probability of catching bonus largemouth and spotted bass, with the occasional bruising striper.

During the afternoon we talked about hard-bodied stickbaits and when to fish them. Jerry said with a smile, “You guys don’t miss much!” We all discussed our favorite styles and brands and concurred that Rapala Husky Jerks and X Raps bang the most fish because of their neutral buoyancy, realistic looks, and enticing wobbles. Fished over the tree tops or on gravel points early in the season, stickbaits are as deadly as any of the arrows in Jerry’s quiver.

Slip-bobber fishing was a relatively new approach for Jerry, and teacher turned student when the discussion came up. We fish small jigs opposed to plain hooks; incorporate attracting beads and even a touch of hair or feather on a jig. Livebait was strongly endorsed by both Mark and I, tipping with a half of crawler, whole shiner minnow, or plump leech – leeches being Greek down this way. (We promised Jerry to find him a source for big black Minnesota leeches.)

Sharing information with one of the best walleye guides in the South was incredibly rewarding. We all learned from each other on his ‘Arkansas Campus of Fishology.’ But most of all, Mark and I came away with an experience we will not forget and made friends with southern guide who is equally as passionate about walleyes.

Editor’s Note: Special thanks to Mountain Harbor Resort on Arkansas’ Lake Ouachita for providing top-flight lodging along with some serious home cooking. Visit www.mountainharborresort.com. Call 501-282-6104 to book a boat with the amazing Jerry Bean.