I just wanted to take a minute to thank everyone at this site for greatly expanding my walleye fishing forte. I was generally a live bait fisherman this time of year, jigs and worms, leeches, lindy rigs, etc. I have had pretty good success overall for a relative beginner, but tough conditions almost always sent me off the water with an empty live well. Today, I took a combination of advice from H2O, who said somewhere fish are ALWAYS feeding, and from StillAKid, who taught me to try various retrieves with cranks to find what the fish are looking for, and from RiverEyes, who has already taught me a lot about the behavior of eyes.
I managed 11 fish today, when shad flies (may flies) were so thick in some areas that you could not see the surface of the water. I kept looking and found one active fish, then another. Each fish it seemed wanted a different approach. All were on Wallydivers, but some on suspending model and some on “standard” model. The first couple of fish were on standard, steady retrieve. The next couple, from the same area, hit while I was ripping. Still others would not hit a standard crandbait, but when I switched to a suspending one and did a stop and go retrieve, they seemed not to be able to resist the bait stopping in front of them and just hanging there. I caught six fish this way. One a 24″ beauty! Also took one sauger in 2-3 feet of water with this bait.
It is like a picture that was very fuzzy suddenly became clear for me, thanks to all of you I have MUCH more confidence on the water, and,in my case, confidence means fish! Thanks much to everyone who uses this site!
Rooster
July 16, 2001 at 12:38 am
#1327156
