Night fishing spring walleyes in Door County

After receiving incredibly unusually warm weather the past couple of weeks it has rapidly raised water temps putting them in the mid 40 degree range here in Door County which we typically dont see in till the middle part of April. This has lots of walleyes moving in to the shallow water feeding up and preparing to spawn soon.

We began our fishing trip at 7pm targeting steep dropping shore lines concentrating on the 8 to 12 feet of water. We fished minnow baits on flat lines trolled directly behind the boat and also fished one line on the deep edge attached to a planer board using a deeper diving shad profile bait to intercept fish that were moving in from deeper water.

For the first couple of hours most of our fish were coming on the line we had running on the planer board over slightly deeper water with a couple of fish coming on our flat lines directly behind the boat. As the night went on and it became later we had many more fish move in to shallower water and we began to catch more fish on our flat lines behind the boat.

When we are using multiple lines both flat lines behind the boat and baits running on planer boards we are always running our flat lines holding the rods and slowly pumping the baits forward then letting them fall back. By pulling the baits forward and letting them fall back we get many more bites by fish that are following baits. After finishing the night around 2am we ended up with a dozen nice walleyes and one bonus pike.

Paul Delaney

Late-Eyes Sport Fishing Guide Service

(920) 421-0896