Water Temps & Walleye preferred depth

We are going away on this weekend and from what I hear the water temps will probably be in mid 50’s at the surface.

The lake is a typical northern shield lake, with deep 100’+ depths and an average of 30′ feet or so. It has sand bars, rocky points, shallow bays etc.

Do you think the eyes will still be up shallow or do they typically start backing out to deeper water at these temps?

I’d be looking shallow, particularly early and late in the day. Without knowing anything about the particular lake my approach would be to focus on windy blown shorelines, points, etc., and fish a combination of plastics and crankbaits / jerkbaits in water 12′ or less.

Ditto

Eh thanks James & Crappy Fisherman! We always default to looking in that 15′ to 30′ depth range looking for fish.

We don’t have a lot of confidence fishing shallow for walleye, but were looking to increase our bag of tricks!

James Holst wrote:

I’d be looking shallow, particularly early and late in the day. Without knowing anything about the particular lake my approach would be to focus on windy blown shorelines, points, etc., and fish a combination of plastics and crankbaits / jerkbaits in water 12′ or less.

Sounds like that would make a good show – say on Devils Lake in ND maybe????

Rick Janssen wrote:

Sounds like that would make a good show – say on Devils Lake in ND maybe????

Sounds like every walleye show we do from March through June to be honest.

James Holst wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Rick Janssen wrote:</div>
Sounds like that would make a good show – say on Devils Lake in ND maybe????

Sounds like every walleye show we do from March through June to be honest.

And could be from August through ice up too….wait a minute…

Well, were back from the the lake. It was absolutely beautiful!! Very little cottages, and low boat traffic.

Water temps were mostly 45-48. Really tried hard in the shallows but couldn’t get anything to go.

We casted jigs, live bait & crank baits in a bunch of different 5-15′ areas, some had good current in neck down areas.

We were near 2 of the main spawning areas for the lake. We could only find fish in the 20-30′ foot range.

We got some major weather on Sunday, so after being blown of the water for most of Sunday we had to get out and couldn’t control the boat to jig properly so we trolled.

I don’t think we really located where they were holding. We managed 5 or 6 jigging in 20′-25′ of water but most of our fish came trolling the 25′ to 30′ depth down shore lines.

I”m sure the fish we picked up trolling were migrating to/from the spawning area.

Thanks for the tips!