Green Bay walleyes

Every spring for about 20 years now, some friends and I have been taking a fishing trip to the waters of Lake Michigan around Door county. Our normal target species is brown trout but we have run into and detoured for walleyes, smallies and northern pike.

For several years now, I’ve been kicking around the idea of fishing the Marinette side of Green Bay and the Menominee river instead of Door county. This year, long time friend Dick Straub and I arranged to meet up with Tom Gursky and Al Erickson on Thursday, April 17. We arrived at the boat landing in Marinette around 1:30pm where we met Tom, Al and Frank Pearson. They showed us a safe path to the mouth of the river and we started rigging lines. Al was kind enough to give us a couple of his Wingdammer blades and it wasn’t very long at all before Dick was yanking in one small walleye after another. The rest of the afternoon was spent working blades or Al’s special jigs tipped with minnows. Both worked very well and although we saw several decent fish caught, including the one Al caught in Tom’s report, we never did tie into a good one.
Later Frank jumped in our boat and showed us several more good places to fish on the Menominee and a couple of mud flats and rock piles to avoid while navigating the river.
We had four days to fish this area and our game plan was to cover as much water as possible. We very much wanted to spend more time fishing the Menominee river, but we also wanted to find out how good the brown trout and walleye fishing was out in the bay. This trip was going to be very important when deciding where to go for future spring fishing trips.

Our plan for Friday was to start the day jigging the river mouth and then play it by ear. We woke up to a chilly rain which hung around for the entire day and a 15-20mph NNE wind didn’t make fishing easy. Thank god for my Gamehide Typhoon series jacket and bibs. With the proper layers underneath, I stayed warm and dry all day. You can’t stop the rain or spray from 3′ waves but with good gear like Gamehide, at least you can keep it from soaking you to the bone!
The bite in the river mouth was off and by 9:00am we decided to try trolling for brown trout and walleyes in the bay. Neither one of us has a Michigan fishing license so our only choice was to head south out of the river mouth. The rest of the day was spent trolling in depths from 4′ to 12′ deep. We found warmer water on some wind driven points but very few fish and by the end of the day, we only managed to scrape up two brown trout and a small lake trout. Plus we had to endure a rough 5 mile ride back to the mouth of the river.
Saturday wasn’t much better but at least the rain wasn’t as bad and neither was the wind. We spent some time in the early morning trolling #12 Husky Jerks behind 3oz bottom bouncers in the river mouth. We had noticed that the few big walleyes we saw caught the past day or two here were mostly caught by trollers. That didn’t produce for us either and by 8:00am or so, we once again headed out in the bay to try our luck trolling. By the end of the day we had about the same thing as yesterday. Two brown trout and one 31″ pike. So far, we were getting our butts kicked but good. Time for a new game plan!

Sunday, we headed south down to the Oconto river with the boat still on the trailer. The winds had been blowing from the NNE for two strait days now and on the map showed a nice big point in the shoreline right where the Oconto river dumped into the bay.
We motored a mile or two upwind, then spun the boat around and set lines in 8′-10′ of water as we trolled with the wind. Not 10 minutes later we had our first fish on and shortly after Dick slid the net under a nice 24″ walleye. Shortly after that, Dick reeled in another 31″ northern pike. His second one of the trip.
By the time we cleared the net and lines it was time to start another run. The second run didn’t produce anymore fish so we pulled the plug and moved on to the area around the Peshtigo river mouth.
We didn’t have our lines in the water for more than 10 minutes before the action started. Over the next two hours or so, we pulled in six more walleyes, all between 21-23″ long. Nothing big but after the last couple of days, we were just happy to finally be able to put something together that was working. By noon though, the action was over and although we tried, we didn’t find anymore active fish.
Monday morning was our last chance to put some good fish in the boat before this trip was over. We headed straight for the area out in front of the Peshtigo river and our first fish of the day was a dandy, spawned out a walleye. Shortly after, Dick lost a real big fish that was making the planer board look like a bobber. We didn’t have time to hang our heads for long though as the action didn’t stop and later Dick made up for losing that big fish by reeling in the best fish of the trip. Another one of those huge Green Bay walleyes!
By mornings end, we landed eight walleyes and three brown trout. All the walleyes were over 21″ long and the browns though not big, were definitely chunky.
We caught almost all of the walleyes and brown trout on #8 and #10 husky jerks trolled between 100-120′ behind the planer boards in 8′ to 16′ of water.
It seems odd, but there were plenty of fish out in that deeper water. There’s no way our lures were anywhere near the bottom so the fish were either suspended or they came up to smack our lures.
Alls well that ends well and despite a tough start, this trip ended on a real positive note. Looks like there’s a very good chance we’ll be coming back next year too!