Without a doubt, one of the hardest professions that anyone can ever assume is trying to make a modest living as a walleye fishing guide.
Customers can be quite demanding, overhead expenses will eat you alive, and even the highest quality boating and fishing equipment can fall victim to gremlins, causing them to break down without notice. Then there’s the weather, which is notorious for refusing to cooperate. Worse, because the best walleye fishing is confined primarily to the northern border states and Canadian provinces, Mother Nature can be trusted to give you a pink slip every November. It’s no wonder that most walleye guides’ hair turns gray before the age of 40.
As a result, it should come as no surprise that, if you’re going to “make something” in this business, nothing is more important than maintaining the reputation you’ve earned by constantly keeping customers on the hook. Here’s how to catch Zemniki walleye from ace guides at the toughest time of the year – late summer.
“Late summer, from July through September, is the hardest time of year to find walleyes,” says Zemnicki, a walleye guide from Oak Harbor, Ohio. “Paradoxically, however, once you locate them, you can often catch your limit in many species.”
Strategies for catching walleyes in late summer, according to an old school guide
The reason why fish are difficult to find is that they are tightly packed in schools in certain locations. Warmer temperatures have also pushed them into much deeper water, or at least into areas where the water beneath them is much deeper. Unfortunately – for guides – this is the time of year when many people like to schedule their fishing vacations. If a guide can provide consistent walleye at the end of the summer, he is guaranteed heavy repeat business the following year.
This time of year, my bread-and-butter technique is finding suspended fish. Although I perfected my approach in the island-clustered area of Lake Erie’s western basin, it works well on any water.
The secret to locating suspended walleyes is to use a flashing depth sounder or graph recorder in combination with some type of bottom contour map or intimate knowledge of the lake bottom. Although a group of walleyes may hover at almost any arbitrary mid-depth level, they almost always appear to be related to some deeper structure further down. Discover deep reefs with 18 to 25 feet of water above them, rocky depressions on otherwise continuous flats, winding river channels on the floors of man-made reservoirs, or even underwater saddles or ridges connecting midlake islands.
The importance of using a depth sounder or chart recorder is not only to find out what structure the fish are using, but also to determine the exact depth level at which they are suspended.
Of course, I move fast at first, moving back and forth over deep structure, searching for either pods of baitfish or suspended walleyes near the surface. You will almost always find both together, with the walleye almost directly beneath their bait, so, if I see baitfish on my sonar, but no walleye, I immediately, in the spring, find the type of spot where I can virtually guarantee any angler all the walleye action he wants* Slow down and begin methodically scouring the area like a vacuum cleaner.
When I find a group of walleyes, the type of lure I use depends on how deep the fish are hanging out. If they’re deeper than 25 feet, I like to go right over them and pump heavy jigging spoons up and down vertically. If they are 18 to 25 feet deep, I like to troll balsa minnows with weights on the lines to get them down. If the fish are hanging out in 10 to 18 feet, casting a deep diving crankbait usually pays off.
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Walleyes have a strange habit of staying only five or six feet below the surface in late summer, although the water there may actually be 30 feet or more deep. In such a situation, the looming shadow of a boat passing overhead has to be kept in mind. This won’t necessarily scare the fish, causing them to panic and dive into deeper water, but they will slowly start swimming to one side or the other, out of the way of the boat.
Now is when I start trolling small-type plugs running shallow along a planing board. These are inexpensive devices you can buy at most tackle stores: they attach about eight feet ahead of your lines. When trolled slowly, they turn sharply and track their own course about 20 yards to the right and left of your boat’s path, which puts your lure in the perfect position to be easily seen by shallow-suspended walleye poking out of the boat’s path.
More often than not, I will see these shallow walls on my sonar for only a short while and then they will quickly disappear from the screen. I know exactly what is happening because, just a few seconds later, we will usually get an attack from one side of the boat or the other. Grant Hughes, Cook, Minnesota “I own and operate Muskego Point Resort on Lake Vermilion, one of the better producers of big walleyes in the state.
How to Catch More Walleye Without Forward-Facing Sonar, According to Fishing Legend
Each year, we harvest several fish up to eight pounds. I also guide anglers on several Boundary Waters Canoe Area lakes. When it comes to catching walleye during the fall months of September, October and November, you can’t do better than backtrolling with live bait.
The water temperature begins to cool rapidly, and this causes the walleyes’ metabolism to decrease. Successfully catching walleyes depends on the use of very slowly fished live bait.
My friends Al and Ron Lindner of nearby Brainerd pioneered the art of backtrolling, but they relied primarily on night crawlers for bait. I find this method frustrating because panfish like bluegills, perch and rock bass will never leave the night crawler alone, so you have to change the bait every few minutes. I prefer to use leeches and live minnows. They are more sustainable fodder.
Essentially, backtrolling means operating your boat in reverse gear with the broad transom pushed into the water, which serves to slow the boat’s speed substantially.
I recommend light spinning tackle and an open-face reel loaded with six-pound test line. Thread the line through a sliding sinker of appropriate weight – depending on how deep you are fishing. Then tie a small knob at the end of the line. Next, tie a second length of monofilament (about six feet long) to the swivel and tie a No. 8 or No. 10 Aberdeen hook to the terminal end. The swivel not only keeps the line from twisting but also prevents the sinker from slipping off the hook. The hole in the sinker allows free travel of line so you can feed slack to a fish that has taken the bait and is not feeling any resistance.
Now, unwind the bail of your spinning reel and let the slack line drag the rig to the bottom. Don’t close the reel’s bell, simply twist the line around your index finger to keep it in place. Then, shift your outboard into reverse gear and begin slowly reeling your bait downstream.
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When a walleye hits, you may feel either a light peck or just a little resistance as if you had caught a weed. Depending on the feeding mood of the fish on any given day, you will have to experiment to determine the best time to attack. When I feel the first fish of the day, I wind up the reel and make a quick strike. If I miss that particular fish, I start waiting longer. Next time, I’ll simply release my finger from the line and let the volley count three times before picking up the slack and striking. If that doesn’t work, I’ll give the next fish a six count.
As the water begins to cool rapidly, walleyes are moving out of their deeper summer homes and congregating around some shallow structures such as submerged rock piles, rocks, the edges of whatever weeds are still green, and drop-offs and underwater ledges. During the fall months, I find most of them at depths of eight to 12 feet.
Walleyes are rarely found in large schools at this time of year, but still, they prefer to be with others of their own kind. So if you catch a fish in a particular spot, don’t be too eager to leave until you have carefully worked the immediate area for at least the next half hour.
This story was originally published in the August 1985 issue of Outdoor Life.
