Summary of my five fishing tips for walleye:
- Live Bait Isn’t Always The Answer For Finicky Fish
- Don’t Forget About The Weeds In The Summer
- Use Heavier Jigs When Fishing With Plastics
- Pay Attention To The Weather
- Match The Hatch
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1: Live Bait Isn’t Always The Answer For Finicky Fish
When of the best fishing tips for walleye that I have is to avoid fishing slower and downsizing when the fish are finicky. A lot of anglers fall into this trap, thinking that this is the only possible way to make these fish bite. However, the snap jigging technique for walleye has opened up many more possibilities when targeting walleye that are not aggressively feeding. If you want to learn more about snap jigging, check out this article.
When fishing small live bait presentations slowly, you are attempting to “fool” the fish and generate a feeding response. By aggressively snapping a plastic or jigging rap style lure, you are “triggering” a bite and it does not matter whether the fish are hungry or not. When a fast-moving bait passes a walleye, they don’t get a very good look at it and must make a quick decision on whether or not to strike. With live bait, walleyes can inspect your lure for as long as they want. When fish are finicky, turn to artificial lures that you can fish quicker with the snap jigging approach to trigger more fish into biting. Bass Resource has an interesting article on this topic which you can find here, and the same concept can be applied to walleye
2: Don’t Forget About The Weeds In The Summer
Walleye Anglers often talk about the importance of offshore rocks and hard bottom areas for walleye in the summer, and weeds are neglected. You would be surprised how many walleyes still use the weeds in the heat of summer. Most anglers don’t know this and they receive way less angling pressure as a result.
In the heat of the day walleyes will bury deep in the vegetation, and you have to go in there to catch them. Snap jigging plastics or heavy hair jigs are two effective ways to target these fish. Just make sure to have a fairly stiff rod (at least medium power) to snap the lure out of the weeds cleanly when you are jigging.
Around sunrise and sunset walleyes will utilize weed edges, which lend themselves better to other fishing techniques. One of my favorite ways to target walleyes on weed edges is with spinner rigs. Experiment with either a leech or crawler to see what the walleyes prefer. If there are a lot of panfish around, don’t be afraid to use an artificial baits on your spinner rig. Panfish constantly nipping off the tail of your live bait is one of the most frustrating things, and plastics will alleviate this problem.
3: Use Heavier Jigs When Fishing With Plastics
When fishing with plastics, choose a larger jig size than what you would choose if fishing with live bait. This connects to my first point in this list of fishing tips for walleye, which states that speed is your friend for finicky fish. The same principle applies here.
When fishing a light jig head, walleyes have much more time to inspect the lure since it is relatively slow moving through the water column. This works well with live bait since it is actually the real thing and walleyes can tell. Meanwhile, walleyes can tell a lure is fake (plastic) if they get the same amount of time to inspect it.
Upsizing your jig head causes the bait to move drop much quicker in the water, and prevents walleyes from getting too good of a look at it. Walleyes react to the bait quickly, which is key to having success with plastics. To learn more about snap jigging walleye, check out my Beginners Guide To Snap Jigging Walleye.
4: Pay Attention To The Weather
When talking about fishing tips for walleye, weather cannot be overlooked. Wind and barometric pressure are the two main factors that I pay attention to before walleye fishing.
Wind is important since it pushes baitfish schools into cover. The windward side of a piece of cover tends to be better for fishing since the baitfish will be concentrated in these areas. Where there are baitfish, walleyes will not be far behind. If it is calm, look back at the wind from the previous days since the fish are likely to be in the same locations.
Barometric Pressure determines where walleyes will be in the water column. High barometric pressure means that there is physically more pressure pushing down on the fish. Low barometric pressure means there is less physical pressure on them. If it is high barometric pressure, walleyes tend to be hunkered down closer to the bottom. With low barometric pressure, walleyes tend to be higher off of the bottom. Keep this is mind when choosing techniques to effectively target walleye depending on how high off of the bottom they are. For a more in depth explanation on the effect barometric pressure has on fishing, check of this article.
5: Match The Hatch
Knowing a Walleye’s forage base in one of the most crucial things for every angler to know. Walleyes main food source changes depending on the time of year and specific body of water. For a more in depth explanation of these food sources, check out this article by In-Fisherman. If you know what the walleyes are feeding on, choosing a bait that mimics that prey will drastically increase your chances of success. Additionally, it will help key you in on specific locations that may be worth targeting.
I hope you enjoyed this article and found it to be informative. If so, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below.
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For a more in-depth walleye fishing guide, check out our Guide To Walleye Fishing For Beginners