My experience has been that they generally school by size because big walleyes will eat small ones. The same concept applies with other schooling fish too. Almost all fish are cannibalistic so they won’t hesitate to eat each other given an opportunity.
Is a 20 incher gonna eat a 17 incher? No. But a 27 incher might eat a 14 incher. If your catching 15-18 inchers you probably aren’t going to pile into a 28 incher there. No impossible, but unlikely.
I’ve caught them mingled together in lakes, rivers, any time of year.
Certain areas on bodies of water will hold bigger/smaller fish, but I wouldn’t consider them schooled as much as just the forage base consistent with that size’s diet.
I’ve caught them mingled together in lakes, rivers, any time of year.
I would agree with this, I’ve certainly experienced the same.
I’d suspect more likely you have a dominant year class you’re getting into. Keep in mind the older and larger they get, the fewer and farther they become.
I’ve fished lakes where all you’d get were cookie cutter 15″ fish and then out of the blue I’d pull up a 26″ from the same spot.
These are interesting experiences. I was wondering because I just fished my first walleye tournament and was into fish in one area that were cookie cutter size. That was fine because after day one we were in the middle of the pack. Day two however we were in the mindset to go search other areas for bigger fish. Needless to say that didn’t go so well and caught zero walleyes. We should have just grinded out the same spot for if anything to feel like we did something. Lesson learned.
Well that’s a different dynamic fishing a tournament as opposed to just recreational fishing.
If you’re in it to win it, makes sense to take a chance, swing for the fence and hope you connect.
Unless you were leading the board after day 1 (which you weren’t) the strategy to look for bigger fish in other spots is a chance many tournament winners risk.
Days where im catching multiple fish over 6-8-10 lbs are days that are hard to catch a fish under 20″ for the fryer imo.
But, fish do take up what I call community spots… where it is multiple species of all sizes and usually these spots are very inactive.
Im in the camp of no, they don’t school together enough to win a tourney by sorting through dinks to catch 6 bruisers.
But, results can and do vary.
Best way to learn how to do better in a tournament is ask the winner.
IMO there are definitely certain areas that hold bigger fish but as others have said I always believe that a big fish can be in the area of smaller fish but will definitely only bite at optimum times. Example fishing the edge of a hump and catching lots of fish but nothing big, boats happens to slip of hump on a very steep drop and wham there’s a 10lb. You can also do that same thing over and over and never catch the 10lb fish. Then again you have to be on a body of water that has a good balance of year class. And that’s why they call it fishing.
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