It pays to be aware of walleye migration patterns

The more I fish walleyes over the years, the more I am learning about the daily and seasonal movements of our beloved state fish.

Growing up fishing small and mid-sized lakes in Central Minnesota, I developed the impression that walleyes would make seasonal migrations to spawn in the spring, and then settle into a summer pattern that they would stay in until late fall.

While this is true to a degree, I am learning that I seriously underestimated the amount of distance that these fish will cover over the course of a day, as well as the course of a season. Developing a strong understanding of daily and seasonal movements is a key to being consistently successful when targeting walleyes throughout the year.

Both daily and seasonal migrations had significant impacts on a walleye excursion in late May in northern Minnesota. The lake we were fishing is quite large and has a fairly well-known post-spawn migration. A few years back when we had an extremely late ice out, we fished this migration pattern and focused on areas where huge concentrations of fish were funneling out of their spawning areas. However, this year we had an early ice out, and a subsequently early spawn. This means the fish had much more time to disperse throughout the system and the task of finding them would be more challenging.

Walleyes by nature are not ambush predators like bass and northern pike. Walleyes feed by roaming and hunting their food down using keen senses like eyesight and their lateral line to locate and pursue their prey. Therefore, the key to finding walleyes is to find the forage they're feeding on.

In the case of this past weekend, the primary forage for walleye in the lake we are fishing is perch. But at this time of the year, shiner minnows are also coming into the shallows in large concentrations to spawn. This scenario can ultimately have fish doing different things in the lake at the same time. It is important to understand where the bait might be in order to start the search for active walleyes. In the case of this past weekend, the weather conditions impacted the fish we were successful in targeting, based largely on the location and time of day.

The first evening of our fishing trip we focused on the shallow water “shiner bite.” With the warming temperatures over the course of the week following the cold opening weekend, we anticipated the shiners would start running shallow again, pulling the walleyes in behind them. We initially graphed a lot of walleyes in deep water adjacent to a shallow sand and weed flat where the shiners generally come in to spawn.

The sunny, calm conditions that day initially appeared to push the walleyes out of the shallower water to the base of the deeper break. We were able to pull a few fish out of the deeper water early, but the bite was slow.  However, as the sun dipped towards the horizon, the fish made a daily migration into shallow water to feed under the newly created, low-light conditions.

While we were still graphing fish deep, we moved shallower under the suspicion that feeding fish would be moving up. That move proved to be successful as we had great action for the last few hours of light. Understanding the daily movements of those fish allowed us to be in the right spot at the right time when the active fish moved in.

The following morning once again brought bright, calm conditions. Had the wind been blowing to create wave action, which would have in turn diminished the light penetration, the shallow water feeding area that was successful the night before could have been hot again. This not being the case, we once again set off looking for deeper fish that were more active.

The use of electronics to locate fish when covering large expanses of water is very important. Today’s graphs and sonars are so powerful that fish can be marked at speeds of 20 mph or more. This dramatically speeds up the search for fish, particularly in deeper water where the expanded cone angle allows for wider bottom coverage.

With minimal success targeting deeper fish along the main shoreline breaks, we elected to head off of the shoreline to some mid-lake structure. While some walleyes will follow baitfish along the shorelines all year long, many fish migrate to main lake structure in search of food as the summer progresses.

We were not sure if the fish would have made the migration out yet as traditionally they do not make the transition until late May or early June most years. But electronics quickly indicated that a lot of fish had made the transition.

Shortly after dropping a line it became apparent that these deeper fish also had a better attitude towards feeding than the shallower shoreline fish that were less active with the sunny and calm mid-day conditions. This deep bite stayed consistent until late in the evening when we made a jump back to the shoreline to take advantage of the daily migration of fish coming into the shallows to feed.  As the sun hit the tree tops, we were once again greeted by actively feeding fish in the shallows that were not there when the sun was high in the sky.

Working the daily and seasonal migration patterns was critical to our ability to catch fish throughout the day on this trip. In most systems, walleyes are continuously on the move in pursuit of forage, and their location can change often depending on where the concentrations of food are.

Considering the forage base and how walleyes will in turn migrate to follow the food source can be an important factor to consistently put fish in the boat this season.

This is the opinion of Our Woods & Waters columnist Jason Kron. Contact him at krja0301@gmail.com.