Early Season Walleyes
By Mike Frisch

Opening day for the 2003 walleye season is here. If you’re like me, it’s been a long winter and you are itching to get back in the boat and feel the familiar pull of a walleye on the end of your fishing line. Here are some ideas that can be used to increase your odds of feeling the fight of a walleye on opening weekend and the rest of the early season.

Finding early season walleyes is the first step in the fish-catching equation. Traditional wisdom says that areas in and around any incoming rivers or creeks in a lake are high percentage spots. Walleyes often spawn in these areas and baitfish are often present here as well.

While it is true that an incoming creek or river will probably hold fish, these aren’t the only areas that will hold walleyes. In fact, some of my best early season catches have come on points or turns found on what is often called the shoreline break, that being the first major drop-off area out from shore.

A key to catching break line walleyes is to be able to quickly eliminate unproductive water along that break and find areas holding the most fish. To do this, I slowly cruise the drop-off edge watching my depth finder for any irregularities along the drop like points or turns and also watching for fish. Once likely looking areas and/or fish are spotted, I like to throw a marker buoy and start fishing.

When using this process in shallow lakes where the drop-offs are often in 6-9 feet of water, I may not actually see many fish because the transducer signal from my locator covers a small area in shallow water. However, the locator is very useful in identifying points and turns along the break line that may hold fish. On deeper lakes, I often target drop-offs in 10-18 feet of water looking for structure and signs of fish on the locator as well.

Incidentally, I’ve had good success using the Humminbird Legend series of locators for this style of fishing the past few years. These units do a really good job of showing fish, even those close to the bottom, plus they’re easy to use.

Now that we’ve found early season walleyes, how do we catch them? Jigs and slip-sinker live bait rigs are often my go-to baits for early season walleyes. I like small jigs in the 1/16- to 1/8-ounce size range tipped with minnows. My favorite jigs come from the Fire-Ball family. These jigs feature short-shank, wide gap hooks that work great when fishing with minnows. The original Fire-Ball has put lots of opening day fish in the boat for me over the years, but this year rattling models and metallic models have been added to give early season anglers even more options.

When fishing slip-sinker rigs, I use the adjustable Roach Rig, which allows me to change the length of my snell without having to cut and retie the line. This allows me to experiment with different snell lengths to see what the fish prefer. I often start with a 3-foot snell behind a 1/8-ounce slip-sinker and adjust from there. 

Shiner or fathead minnows are usually my starting bait when fishing early season jigs and rigs. If a lake has a real strong shiner forage base, I go with that bait, if not fatheads will often suffice. While minnows are early season favorites, leeches and night crawlers should be included in your bait bucket. I have seen some openers where these baits have out produced minnows. In fact, when a jig or slip-sinker rig and a minnow doesn’t produce, one early season alternative I prefer is a light bottom bouncer, a 5-foot snell, and a plain hook tipped with a lively leech. More than one early season walleye outing has turned productive using this technique when others failed.

Productive fishing is the goal of most early season anglers. Hopefully the suggestions just offered can help you accomplish that goal. Have a safe and productive fishing season!