MontanaWalleye.com
with pro Dale Gilbert
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Finally - Spring has come!
By DALE GILBERT
Montana walleye pro
Spring is here - and finally, I got a chance to wet a line.
The ice has gone off most places and the walleyes are in their pre-spawn to spawning cycles. What this really means, is that if you know where walleyes are spawning it probably means you have a great chance to get into some good fishing. Typically, walleyes are on the move to their spawning areas and will start the spawn when the water temperature gets to the 43-45 degree range. Not all fish show up to spawn at the same time and typically some of the smaller males will hang around the spawning areas for a couple of weeks or more. How long the fish will remain in the spawning areas depends mostly on how much food/forage is available in the area. If there is a good forage base in the area, the fish will hang around a lot longer. If there is not a good forage base in the area, the fish will move on - looking for something to eat in a fairly short period of time.
Water conditions and systems vary considerably this time of the year depending on their size and depth, how much run off from snowpack or precipitation ( we hopefully will still get yet this year), etc.
I recently fished three different systems on three succeeding days and found water temperatures that ranged from 39 degrees (pre-spawn) to 44 degrees (spawning) to 47 degrees (spawning/post spawn).
Methods for catching spring time walleyes typically involve fishing with jigs or live bait rigs, where it is legal, or with crankbaits. One of my favorite ways of catching walleyes in the spring once I have found them is to fish light jigs tipped with some type of bait - generally minnows, or a Berkley Gulp 3" minnow. However, the best fish the other day came on a Rapala Glass Shad Rap trolled with lead core line - a very nice and pretty 8.5 pound walleye.
While fish will spawn in relatively shallow water, generally < 10 foot, a lot of the fish will lay up in deeper water that is close by and can still be caught on the jigs, or a crankbait that is presented using the lead core line to get a smaller bait down into the deeper water - 20 to 25 feet or so.
These deeper fish - are where it pays to have a good depthfinder. Those fish can be found by using your electronics so you know how deep and where to fish. Over the years, I have simply gone looking for fish, thrown out a marker buoy when I found them and then gone back and caught them. These days, I don't use marker buoys anymore, but I depend a lot on my Lowrance GPS plot trail and icons to know where I have marked the fish. The last trip out, I actually used my GPS with a map chip from Navionics that showed me the edge of a nice breakline to follow while pulling the crankbait to catch the fish I caught. What is really nice is that with the new color units like the Lowrance LCX 111c HD, the fish that I am looking for show up with a nice deep red color, with the larger fish showing a bit of yellow in the signal.
Another tip for your spring fishing is to slow down and fish slower than you would at other times of the year. For the most part, right now the water is cold and the fish's metabolism is slow - so they are not going to be willing to exert a lot of energy to eat. If I am trolling crankbaits, I may slow down to 1 to 1.5 mph, and if I am fishing jigs I may bulk it up with a plastic tail so that I have to slow down in how I fish it. Bulking up the jig with a tail and sometimes adding a minnow or piece of crawler for scent works well for me this time of the year.
In Montana, we are very fortunate to some degree to be able to fish year round for walleyes and aren't faced with a closed season - during the spawn like many states have. Yet on the other hand, I have begun to wonder if the state might not have to look at doing something to protect those fish in some areas - since more and more, people have figured out what is going on and unfortunately in some cases abuse the privilege by keeping the prime spawners. Bottom line this is not good for anyone.
A few years back, I remember getting out one day and catching 13 walleyes that averaged about 7 pounds a piece. I contacted our local fisheries manager and took him out to the area I had caught those fish one afternoon and we caught 5 fish, from 5.5 to 10.5 pounds in about 4 hours of fishing. Not a bad day by anyone's standards. What I found very interesting is that we took measurements, weights, and scales for samples and later found out that those fish averaged 13 years of age. All of those fish were released for another day - but I keep thinking about on one hand if I had kept those fish - it would have been like taking the equivalent of 100 years of fish out of the system. Actually in talking to one of the fisheries managers for the Fort Peck area, they have now found walleyes in that system that are up to 22 years of age. Think about what you are taking out of the system before you put one like that in your live well for the frying pan next time.
So, as much as I love to connect with a pre-spawn/spawn bite, I believe it is critical for people to practice some "selective harvest" - keeping some of the smaller males for a fish or two to eat and release the prime spawners. Fact is, a 5# female can hold as much as up to 100,000 eggs. Granted that sounds like a lot, but fact is only a small percentage of those eggs will survive and of those that hatch only a small percentage of those will survive the first year.
In summary, we should all get out and enjoy what can be some of the best fishing of the season, but at the same time don't abuse the privileges we have. I still remember the very first 4 pound walleye I ever released and am still proud to know it went back to spawn and maybe give someone else the chance of catching a nice fish - it could be the next state record today.
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Dale R. Gilbert
44 Foxtail Lane
Ulm, MT 59485
Phone: 406-866-3304
Cell: 406-788-3824
E-mail Dale
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© Copyright, 2007-10, Dale Gilbert
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