Finding Walleyes – STUMPED

I started taking ice fishing seriously last year (going 3-4 times a week) and mainly fished for crappies, gills, and pike. This year I have made it my goal to not only catch my first walleye through the ice, but become good at doing so. That being said, this morning I went out and fished everywhere inside the red circle and all I caught were a bunch of small perch and a few pike. When looking at a map/app like the Navionics one I use, what are you looking for when searching for walleyes? I thought a hump with deep water around it would work but please, any advice is very much appreciated!

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Without more lake specific info it is difficult to provide any direction. Based on the info that you provided, perhaps the timing of your visits to the hump could be in question.

Gary Sanders wrote:

Without more lake specific info it is difficult to provide any direction. Based on the info that you provided, perhaps the timing of your visits to the hump could be in question.

Assuming on your avatar location you where fishing a metro lake. If that is the case, more times than not, it will be more challenging than panfish and pike. Walleyes are heavily pressured in the metro, and in my opinion, more difficult to catch consistently and especially a consistent daytime bite. What lures/bait where you trying.

Based on your map, it looks like a good location to try. I would also try to the south west of your circle where the deep finger slides up to shallow water. What was the bottom content? Was there a weed edge? On a side note, typically if I catch perch in a spot during the day, I more times than not catch walleyes in the same spot come “magic hour” (half hour before and after dark). Good luck and keep trying.

Hard to say more with a limited area snap shot of the lake. What is covered up and just out of view is what is interesting to me.

One thing I’ve learned on points and humps over the years – EVENTUALLY they will go by there, but not every night. You may have been very close. The fact that small perch and pike were there says Dinner was available. May just have been an off day/night. Once you get an “area” established that they frequent, you want to find more just like it. If they are not eating at the restaurant your at, move to the next one. Hopefully what I’m trying to explain makes sense.

The screen shot I added has two distinct humps. I catch eyes along here often, but they don’t hit the same hump every night, or come in from the same direction. No different than open water, need to scan the area and see what they are doing. The larger map of this shows about a dozen humps like this. If they aren’t coming in like clock work – run-n-gun time

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Fishing that area I would think is a good spot. I don’t doubt your location choice. I will say that the majority of my luck on that lake for walleye action has come at twilight hours. Very limited luck fishing mornings.

Also want to take into account what the bottom structure is in that area. Hard gravel is the best to catch eyes. If you’re catching little perch you’ll likely have walleye’s show up later.

there are no fish in excelsior bay

Actually it’s funny I saw this post because I was just looking at my navionics at this lake identifying humps to find walleyes. I’m sort of in the same boat you are where I’ve read all I can about locating walleyes but ive yet to put it into practice sucessfully yet. I fish this lake a lot, maybe if you’d be interested we could go out together sometime in search of walleyes.

Just from my experience fishing lakes, if there are weeds on the flats around the “humps”,check out the outside edges right around or shortly after dark. IMHO Good luck!
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Gary Sanders wrote:

Without more lake specific info it is difficult to provide any direction. Based on the info that you provided, perhaps the timing of your visits to the hump could be in question.

Im not so much asking about this lake in general. More so any ideas of other depths/depth changes I should be looking for when using a map.

Any preference for color when fishing for walleye? Natural colors in clear water and flashy in darker? Thanks to everyone who already replied as well!

Get the book by in fisherman” walleye tactics volume 2 location”. Very in depth detailed information that will help you be a better fisherman. It helped me a lot.