Deep Water Walleyes on Pokegama

Two weeks ago I had caught a nice 28 inch Walleye trolling for lakers; since then I had heard of a few other fisherman catching some big ‘eyes doing the same. This past weekend a friend of mine started to target the deep water ‘eyes and was able to get 30″, 29″ and 28 1/2″ in one outing. He was targeting the fish in 45 to 60 FOW 40 to 45 ft down. Now albeit he only caught 3 walleyes and a few pike in the course of 5 hours I would take those 3 fish anyday.

So last night I decided to try a mix bag of fishing. I started out targeting the deep water eyes. I marked a lot of fish in the 40 to 50 ft range 1 to 10 ft of the bottom had my rigger set at 38′ and tried to stay in about 42 FOW with a variety of lures and I was able to pull one 6lb northern from one of the schools of fish. I think I need to put a little more time into this tactic as there were too many fish on the graph to not give it another go around.

Just before sunset I switched to crappies with no prevail; that was a short lived effort as I got bored and quickly pulled out the trolling rod and started fishing walleyes again. I started by the islands and caught two nice eater walleyes in the first two passes. Missed another on the 3rd pass and then got blanked. The fish were holding just of the weed edge in 16 to 19 FOW suspended with the balls of baitfish. I was using a #7 salmo sting hot tiger.

I tried the night bite under the moonless sky for a couple of hours and caught one smallmouth. I may have to get out of bed early one morning and get out fishing when the moon is out to say the night bite is over as the moon peaks around 2 AM right now.

Talked to another one of the local guides on the water last night and discussed the slow day bite and how hot the bluegill and northern bite has been lately; just about everywhere the bluegills are biting and trolling for pike along or in the weeds will produce fish. The bigger pike seem to be holding on the deep edge of the weeds.

Do you think there is a concern for the health of a big Walleye hauled up from 40 feet of water to the surface and then released?

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Do you think there is a concern for the health of a big Walleye hauled up from 40 feet of water to the surface and then released?

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yes

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Do you think there is a concern for the health of a big Walleye hauled up from 40 feet of water to the surface and then released?

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yes

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I have caught a lot of walleyes and pike out of deep water, the only ones I have ever seen float or die are the smaller ones. I have yet to see a larger walleye float up from deep water unless you stomach hook it. The key is to get it back in the water as fast as possible so it can swim back down to the deep water decompress. You can’t put it in the live well for pictures later and you can’t release it in shallow water. If caught in deep water release in deep water.

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I have caught a lot of walleyes and pike out of deep water, the only ones I have ever seen float or die are the smaller ones. I have yet to see a larger walleye float up from deep water unless you stomach hook it.

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All that really proves is that the bigger Walleyes didn’t up and die right in front of you. Delayed mortality is another matter. Also factor in the water temperatures were seeing right now. This might be a good time to focus on other species or methods.

I’m not trying to hammer on you, just concerned that not everyone pulling Walleyes out of extreme depths is going to release those bigger fish successfully.

Rootski

The reason these fish are at the depths they are at is because of the cooler water and oxygen content. Generally if the fish doesn’t surface/float after 15 to 20 minutes it is fairly safe to say the fish has decompressed. When I do catch a walleye from that depth I continue to troll that area and have never seen a large healthy walleye float back up from being caught. From what I have seen in the past smaller ones that aren’t strong enough to make it back to the depths are back up in 10 minutes. However, I have not yet caught a small walleye in the deep water on Pokegama and if I did anything under 19 is going in the live and straight to the frying pan.

Fisherman on Eerie and in Canada (particularily LOTW) fish summer walleyes between 40 to 50 FOW all the time and have no problems with a healthy fish dying. I know quite a few people that have a cabin on the Canadian side and they will tell you the same thing.

I do agree with the fact that some fisherman don’t know the proper way to release a fish successfully. A lot of my success in releasing fish has come from trial and error and reading articles.