Open basin trolling at sunset

Inspired by shows and articles I thought I would give open water trolling over deep basins a try with shallow running cranks. I went to a deep lake last night with good population of walleye with some nice fish in the system. the lake does have Cisco and Not a ton of structure in general but the middle is between 80-100 feet deep. I trolled from 7 to 10 with the full moon. I had consistent small arcs on the screen pretty much the entire length of the lake but they were all below 30 feet with the highest concentration between 60-90′ down. Are these the Cisco that are supposed to rise in the water column to follow the invertebrates? I cannot say that I marked a legitimate mark shallower then 25′ all night.

I know this is not usually a numbers technique so I am not giving up but I was just wondering what your thoughts were on what I was marking and if I should be making passes only when I mark larger arcs shallower or look for something different on the sonar before trolling.

Besides great lakes and Mille Lacs, I haven’t had a ton of success doing this. When I have had success targeting suspended walleyes on smaller lakes in Northern Minnesota it usually still had a correlation with structure. For example: Targeting suspended fish adjacent to a rock reef. The fish were only 10 feet down in 40′ of water, but they were also only about 50 yards from being in 10′ of water.

Mos’ wrote:

just wondering what your thoughts were on what I was marking and if I should be making passes only when I mark larger arcs shallower or look for something different on the sonar before trolling.

I would rely heavily on your electronics in this scenario and try to target walleyes that you see on your sonar.

I had luck doing this years ago (1990’s) on xxxxxxx Lake up by Perham. Big open bowl mostly over 100 feet deep. We would go out near sunset and the action usually started about 30 minutes after sunset and would be over in about an hour and was very hectic. We used deep bomber long A’s so we were getting down at least 20 feet. The pattern was very distinct you could see the tullibee (lake Cisco) schools on your graph and when the big arches showed up just beneath the tullibee it was game on. Word got out that this bite was great and shortly after that it was a madhouse out there just after dark, and then it was cleaned out. Tried it again for old times sake about 5 years ago, and was able to boat 2 fish, but is was nothing like it used to be.

This was my first introduction to catching big walleyes consistently, most were over 6 pounds with some up to 10. Great memory, thanks.

Too bad that the pressure ruined that bite for you slawrenz but I appreciate the response! Do you think that it was tullibee then the small arcs I was marking? They just never moved up? Maybe I need to start earlier before sunset? I will try relating a little more to structure on the next trip.

whilemapping a Canadian lake I caught several walleye that I marked on my graph before catching them in the middle of the day. I was trolling shad raps and tail dancers in over 100 feet of water. I caught more of them near structre but some of them were no where near anything but bait fish.

Based on my memory the bite happened very shortly after sundown, we made sure we were in position and trolling before sundown. Often we would get a northern or two before the walleye started. We were always off the water by midnight. We considered the bite over when the large arcs (assumed walleye) below the small arcs (tullibee) disappeared. For us structure had nothing at all to do with it, the structure was the tullibee

Appreciate the replies! I will look for larger arcs next time and see what happens