To start my story, I must admit that I have not been a very good walleye fisherman. I know many presentations and techniques but I never took the time to learn the lakes I fish and applying the corrrect thing in the correct place.
So, I’d catch a fish here and there, but mostly out of luck and not much skill.
I vacation in Hayward often in the summer. This year I’m armed with a new boat equipped with two Lowrance LCX-27c sonars with GPS and Navionics map cards. Best of all, the 2008 Navionics card has a high-def map of the Chippewa Flowage so I spent many 10 to 12 hour days exploring as many underwater humps, points, and flats (that you don’t see on printed maps) as I could. I definitely learned that non-high-def paper maps are a general guide, but there’s a lot of important detail they don’t show. While I didn’t get a lot of walleye, I did MUCH better than normal and caught well over 100 crappie each day.
That experience inspired me to learn Wissota better so I can be smarter about trying to pattern what the fish are really doing. So I picked one large structure on the map, and last Friday evening I headed out after work with the intent of NOT FISHING until I’ve run the perimeter of the structure to see the real shape, depths, etc. and find something (rocks, cribs, fish arches, anything different) to fish.
I motored over to the general structure and started at the shallowest part, looking for the first dropoff. Then, to take advantage of my GPS trail feature, I went into “My Trails” and started a new trail. I proceeded along the dropoff zig-zagging between the top and bottom of the drop. The zig-zag trail on my GPS map basically draws the outline of the structure and the slope of the dropoff – a narrow zig-zag is a fast drop and wider zig-zag is a more gradual drop. Most importantly, I noted that one side dropped to 30’+ depths while other sections dropped only to 15′. Hmm, one long stretch drops only to 15′ where the map shows it going deeper.
Where I saw the drop to 30′ change to a drop to 15′, I started there and ran straight out from the original structure, looking for that next drop to deeper water. Indeed, quite a distance out I found a drop from 15′ to 25’+. I’m thinking I found an undwerwater point or flat. So, I proceeded to zig-zag again from the first dropoff to the second dropoff. At that point, I realize I’m on a 15 to 16′ flat and I’m marking fish scattered across it!
Well, it was a beautiful warm Friday evening on calm water, but it was getting late so I just HAD to stop and fish for an hour or so. Since my favorite way to fish is vertical jigging AND I usually like to jig for crappie at the same time as walleye, I decided to slowly drag jigs across this small area (as inspired by Jason Halfen). As usual, I hook a leech on an 1/8 oz jig and a small power tube on a 1/16 oz jig. I didn’t have to wait long to get some action. I caught 6 smaller walleye and two large crappie before heading home.
That experience got me really excited and thinking I’m on to something. I couldn’t sleep well as I was so anxious to get back out there Saturday.
Saturday morning I had to make a trip to Zachos to exchange a defective Optima battery, so I didn’t get out really early. But I got there and approached the same ‘flat’ area from a different direction to see what I’d find. Remember I have the trail display on my GPS map now so I know exacly where it is. Sure enough, I saw the depth come up from 25’+ to 16′ so I tossed a marker on the edge and once again zig-zagged along that edge and dropped another marker to give a better idea what direction it runs. This part of the flat is a good distance from yesterday’s hot spot so I’m thinking it’s a good size flat.
I used the same lures and presentation as Friday evening and it continued to produce. 
Even despite the boat traffic running around my area the fish were actively feeding in the late morning throughout the afternoon. I just floated around that fairly small area and in the end, I boated 22 walleye and 12 crappie. About half the walleye were in the slot and the rest below 14″. All but one of the crappie were over 10″ so I kept five of those for Sunday lunch.
Btw, I was surprised how many walleye like the little crappie tubes.
By dinner time, a storm was rolling in so I had to get off the water but I left with the feeling that I’m smarter than I was a couple days ago. I wanted to get back out Sunday to further explore that area, but the wife had other ideas. 
Maybe next weekend…