Need some help from the walleye wizards

Ive been fishing this lake for a number of years on the open water, just 2 years on the ice and having issues on locating numbers of walleye, Ive tried about ten spots on the ice and the best daily numbers were 2, Im currently setup where the red arrow is in about 29 feet (this is where I caught numbers on the last open water trip), on the bottom of drop off that goes from 8′ to 32′, the top of the drop is all weeds, the bottom of the drop off has a transition of rock to sand.

Should I be straight in the weeds?

right now were catching perch, good numbers and size, we’ll catch 1 or 2 walleyes per day

thoughts?

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I would focus on the inside breaks and not the basin. Weed edges don’t be afraid to fish shallow.

Ive tried some weed edges last year, maybe not as defined as this spot without success, the opposite side of this island is all weeds, the side Im on now has big transition from rock to sand.

I do have a better map on my sonar where I have the edge of the weeds all marked

Move up the break fish shallower.

Absent any clue from you on where the lake is, what type of lake it is, natural or stocked, pressured or not, clear, stained or dirty water, walleye population level, well…. fish dusk and dawn.

sorry about that

the lake is in Northern Ontario Canada, the name of the lake is Remi Lake ,its available on the Navionics maps, well what I scanned anyways.
Its a natural lake, not stocked, decent pressure in the open water season, but I wouldn’t call it crazy, on the ice the pressure is low, theres maybe 5 huts on the whole lake, the water is stained but on a level of 1 to 10, I would say its a 4, walleye population is good, the open water trips we did were decent lots of nice walleyes and big ones to, I tried from dusk till dawn and where Im at now the walleyes we caught were between noon and 3pm, none before noon and none after 3

Is there lake trout on this lake? I think you need to look for forage on locator and maybe move tight to weed line and see if you get Northerns or walleyes. The big trout may own the deep water with the big northerns. midlake humps would be my next probe between the islands and off that point thatleads to a saddle to the island.

mike

Weed lines, soft bottoms. Find the muck and hit the contours around that would be my guess. The bottom of food chain needs to eat something and those northern lakes typically aren’t as fertile what we see down here.

Mike Klein wrote:

I would focus on the inside breaks and not the basin. Weed edges don’t be afraid to fish shallow.

X2 on this – move up the break and out of the actual basin. As stated, you dont want to be IN the weeds, but around the edge of the them in some shallower water when you locate the time these fish are ready to feed.

Like some of the people above said…don’t be afraid to get shallower. You are catching fish from 12-3 because that’s where they are active during that time period. If you want to get fish earlier, and later I would suggest moving shallower. I fish a flowage that has a bite very much like that on the channel edges…10-2 they bite like clockwork, but doesn’t pay to be in those spots earlier or later than that because they transition shallower.

no lake trout, but a lot of small mouth

May still qualify as early ice but I remember seeing many bigger walleye while sitting in my buddies spear house over the years. I have no idea why they were there but they were? Best guess is maybe the water temp early ice was warmer there and slowly they slip into deeper water as the winter wears on. We are talking 5 feet or less.

I would probably try the very bottom part of that map where the contour lines converge like this(given there’s weeds in the shallower water there):
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James has an episode on Leech Lake a few seasons ago(the one where they are fishing by lantern light I think) where he talks about that type of spot, as walleyes come up shallower to feed, those contours kind of a form a ‘funnel’ for them to travel along.

I’d probably setup the shack right at the bottom of the funnel and then throw some tip-ups out on either ‘side’ or a bit deeper than where I setup.

Ive been out 2 days in a row moved up the break to the weed line which is in about 12 feet got one walleye at dusk and 3 northerns, today we moved even shallower directly on top of the plateau in 6 feet of water, got only one walleye one hour after dark.

any other opinions or suggestions?

what types of presentations are you using? sounds like you’re finding fish, just not getting numbers of them to bite. You may be working lures to aggressively and spooking more numbers of fish away. Maybe next time out you just run tip ups and move them every 20-30 minutes if they aren’t productive. This way you can spread out more and try to dial in their location by being in more than one place at once.

were doing both tip ups , jigging spoons, jigging raps, ripping raps, small bait, big baits. plain hooks.

dead sticks jigs and jigging spoons have been the best, nothing to brag about though