The river walleye bite is starting to warm up but not in full swing yet. Changing weather patterns have put lock jaw on these walleyes. They are in the river and they can be caught but you have to work for them. I’m not catching big fish but I’m catching good eater fish like this one on the right.
Most of my fish are caught next to deep holes or deep water but not in them, hard bottoms is key. I’m not saying you can’t catch walleyes in the deep hole right now. The pattern for me is working best next to them on the first break. I like to work from the shallows to the deep and that’s how I find my fish. If there was a deep hole at 15′ I might catch my fish at 10′ to 12′ but start in 6′ and jig until I hit 15′ then start over at the 6′ mark again. This fish on the left was caught that way.
This happy angler on the right caught these nice eater fish doing the shallow to deep pattern I was talking about. We all were vertical jigging 3/8oz Zone-R nuckle ball jigs in the glow/green or black/flo red. Since the cold snap shiners were not working that great so we tipped are jigs with fathead minnow, sometimes using two fatheads on one jig got eye’s in the boat. It wouldn’t be long until warm goes to hot on this fall run. So if any of you anglers are in the Jefferson county area in Wisconsin I would make time to fish the rock river east of Lake Koshkonong. You all have a great weekend, remember safety first.