How to Fish Dams for Walleye Updated

How to Fish Dams for Walleye

Ace, Closer, or Dead Arm: What Type of Pitcher are You?

Tommy Skarlis

It might feel warm on land, but the water still may be but 33 degrees. The air around information technology will be cold and breathing produces clouds of vapor. Layers of clothes and heavy coats are mandatory for racing effectually on big rivers in a boat when hunting spring walleyes and saugers.

On the other hand, the water could be 60 degrees, also - "shirtsleeve atmospheric condition." That'due south when you run into hoards of boats on the h2o in walleye land. Virtually of them, if not all, volition head for 1 spot. The bulk of walleye anglers are going to focus on areas below dams on about rivers during jump. Dams are in fact, "migration barriers," and fish stack up there until they can observe a lock or ladder to ascend, so it's a logical identify to begin the search. Moreover, the plunge puddle beneath a dam is almost always ane of the major wintering holes for walleyes.

If you lot similar seeing action (other people fighting and netting fish) or like fighting boat traffic and existence in crowds, dams are alright, but I like to become away from the swarm. The action is often better somewhere downstream, where you might have un-pressured walleyes all to yourself.

Walleyes and saugers tend to stay in wintering pools in depths of 15 to forty anxiety until the spring spawn begins. Typically, river walleyes won't begin spawning until h2o temperatures climb to a higher place xl degrees but some spawn later on. "Spawning peaks" tend to occur during the full moons of March or April and possibly May style upwards north or later an extended winter. Before and after spawning, walleyes volition be staging somewhere almost spawning their habitat.

I hunt for deep wintering holes and spawning areas downstream and abroad from the dam. Most Game & Fish biologists are aware of these areas and will really show them to you on a map. Or just run the river and expect for rocks along the shore. Walleyes spawn on rocky shorelines. If these rocky areas take a steep banking concern, it indicates a steep drop into what could exist a wintering area. If you can discover a wintering hole near spawning habitat, you're in the right spot.

Wintering holes are deep in large rivers, over 15 anxiety in almost cases. When walleyes are holed up, look for current seams where areas with little or no electric current border faster currents. The heads and edges of big eddies, where water circles back upstream backside a wing dam or sand bar, can be a proficient area to search—anywhere slack water or moderate electric current comes close to faster h2o. That'southward where walleyes tin sit and balance, correct next to faster currents where they wait for meals to pass past. Channelized areas on the Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio where they load and unload barges are skilful areas to explore, also—particularly for saugers.

Fish the deep water, but during high water, which typically occurs in the leap, fish will often get to the banks because the high h2o means access to new food sources. Spawners might caput for the banks, likewise. As the water temperature or the water rises, more fish will move shallow.

Walleyes, especially, tin motility into depths of ii to v feet. To attain them, yous can combine vertical jigging and pitching. I angler tin can pitch toward shore while the homo in the bow jigs vertically and fights the current with the trolling motor to "slip" the gunkhole downstream.

The boat can be anchored or held with a power pole, likewise. Both anglers tin can fan cast the bank, lift the ability pole, drift a little farther, peg the gunkhole again and repeat the process until the entire length of a rocky shoreline has been covered.

In slack water I try to focus on slipping or drifting while basically following my jig. I drop the jig and try to go along the line vertical. Electric current is washing the jig downstream then I'm just following information technology. Frequently, the surface currents are faster than currents most bottom, and so the boat has to "slip."

Let the jig's speed decide how fast you drift. If you lot can go a little slower than the electric current it gives the fish a lilliputian longer to look information technology over. Ultra thin diameter super lines take less resistance to the current when fishing over 15 feet deep, so I use x-pound complect, which has a 2-pound diameter and I tie direct to the jig.

The Arsenal

For pitching or fishing vertically, I want a jig that cuts current better than a common ball head, so I mold teardrop jigs with Practise-it molds. The weight-forrad shape is a trivial more "aqua dynamic," dropping straighter and quicker. In spring, the right weights tend to range betwixt 3/8-ounce and 1 ounce. I like to fault on the heavy side. If the jig'due south "fall speed" isn't an issue in triggering strikes, expert fishermen tend to utilize a bit heavier jig because it creates more resistance, makes more noise to attract fish and your bait stays in the strike zone longer and returns faster later on each cast.

My favorite colors are fluorescent pink, white, orange, or chartreuse. But somebody on board should be angling a blackness, purple or brown jig. Natural colors can exist more successful in spring considering fish aren't seeing them from other anglers. Most colors turn blackness or dark-brown at deeper depths anyway. Glow colors are under-fished. Phosphorescent pigment retains its color deep and should probably be fished more often when walleyes are deep.

Walleyes and saugers tend to see larger forage during the leap that survived ever since minnows spawned 8 months or more prior. So a lot of my jigs take buck-tail or synthetic hair to make the bait wait larger and I frequently apparel information technology with live allurement or plastic to give it extra bulk. If you tie cadet-tail or constructed hair to the jig's neckband to bulk it up to imitate larger minnows, and so tip information technology with a pocket-sized minnow. With hair jigs, all you lot need is a little scent, flash, and flavor, so even crappie minnows often work. Brand sure to bring an array of minnows because sometimes they want big shiners. Anglers should always have various species and sizes of minnows on lath during the jump, and each person should exist trying different sizes, styles and colors until yous can identify which combinations are working all-time.

Tip your jigs with a diverseness of plastics, too. A lot of minnows that walleyes find this time of twelvemonth are big, and then I tend to first with shad and minnow-shaped baits. The Ripper is a large, fat, shad-style allurement I turn to a lot. Information technology'southward not as alpine (belly to dorsal) as a shad, but not equally skinny as a shiner, either, and then it imitates both. It has ribs that throw off a lot of sound. A ribbed-allurement creates more than of a disturbance so it attracts predators from further abroad. A Hutch'due south Tackle Walleye Whacker is another prime instance. Hutch's Tackle makes teardrop-shaped Hogg Hunter Jigs, too, and those are the best examples commercially available.

Many states allow for two rods to be fished at once, and I'll say, "It'southward better to fish i rod right, than two rods wrong." All the same, with two rods, ane angler can give them two different combinations to await at, equally an instance; one can have plastic on 1 rig and a minnow on the other.

Varying the presentation of the jig is the divergence betwixt catching a few and catching a agglomeration. Think most what you can alter upwardly that might trigger fish to strike. To know where the jig is in relation to bottom, watch the rod tip. You're trying to stay within a foot, maximum, nigh of the time I want to be within 6 inches of bottom. When the jig hits bottom, reel the rod tip down to the surface and lift the jig half dozen inches off bottom. Piece of work on determining that distance and maintaining it. You tin also bounciness it off of the bottom. Figure out the design that triggers the seize with teeth.

For the most part, the slower y'all tin go, the more successful you are considering most of what they're feeding on are baits that are wounded, dead, or swimming very slowly. Walleyes don't desire to chase something moving fast in common cold water. Nevertheless, jigging is like existence a starting pitcher; both crave several "pitches" in their repertoire.

Much of the time success follows a tap on bottom followed past a lift, and a painfully protracted intermission. Don't move information technology at all. Merely hold information technology at that place. Concord information technology there until y'all tap bottom again or you lot become a strike. It's painful. We grew up thinking we had to jig and pump or popular the rod tip, but concur it until y'all're tempted to jig and so hold it some more.

Then endeavour the pop-and-drop. Pop it a foot off bottom and slowly drop it back down in that location. Shortly equally the line goes slack, pop it back up once more. That popular often acts equally a hook-ready considering slack line tin can also indicate a seize with teeth, not bottom. Fish often hit it well-nigh bottom and you lot may think it's on lesser, but the pop sets the hook. Hook-sets are free. If y'all retrieve you've got a bite, set the hook and sometimes that triggers a bite.

My third favorite "pitch" is the "swim and tap." Continue the jig an inch or and then off the bottom, wiggling, jiggling and tapping bottom equally it drifts downstream, imitating a frightened minnow trying to find cover. And the change ego to that pitch is "banging bottom," continue dropping the jig downward heavily on a slack line and letting it pound lesser. The noise will attract the most agile fish.

No pitcher sticks with ane pitch for too long and neither should yous. The cardinal is to keep going from one cadence to the other until ane works. What's your favorite cadence? Start that mode, but there are hundreds of jig movements that are variations of these strokes to exist tried. A range of motion going from a static-move to an erratic-motion will eventually identify the trigger that'southward working best that twenty-four hour period. Sometimes one action works all solar day, just when not getting scrap for awhile, go to the "modify-upwards."

Keep an center on the depth finder to know when to adapt the amount of line out. That fashion y'all tin conceptualize snags a little ameliorate, and keep the jig virtually bottom a college percentage of the time. Keep moving and grooving from one presentation to the adjacent. "Get your jig on." And fish deep, and then shallow if that fails. Fish areas other anglers ignore. The more water you cover that other people take overlooked, the more successful you will be.