How to catch more—and bigger!—walleye by casting artificial lures

Keep your distance

Parking a big, noisy boat a few feet above a school of walleye is sure to put the fish on guard, especially with the whirring livewell, pinging sonar units and whining electric trolling motor. At worse, it will spook the living daylights out of the fish and send them scurrying into deep water. The effect is exacerbated any time you find the fish in shallow or clear water.

Here’s a case in point. My most memorable day of walleye fishing last season happened during the last week of June, when the fish had fully recovered from the spring spawn and were greedily feeding in five to 10 feet of warm water. My grandson Liam (above) and I were stealthily cruising the shorelines, making long casts with Rapala X-Raps and Lucky Craft Pointers (below) for smallmouth bass, when the first of several 27-inch-plus walleye engulfed my lure.

As it turned out, the walleye were scattered along the shoreline, spread out in optimal 18°C knee- to waist-deep water in perfect low-light conditions, feasting on schools of finger-sized yellow perch. It was overcast and steaming hot and humid, and the water was dead calm. But by keeping our distance instead of trolling spinner rigs or crankbaits over the fish, they never knew we were there. We caught and released one gorgeous walleye after the other for the better part of an hour, with our best five fish approaching 35 pounds in total.

That’s a scenario that would play itself out more often than most walleye anglers think, if only they didn’t insist on moving in too closely to the fish to troll or vertically jig. If you hook a giant ’eye after making a long cast with a crankbait, jerkbait, swimbait or bucktail jig—I’ve even done well casting #4 Mepps spinners—why in the world would you put down your rod, move the boat on top of the fish and start trolling or vertical jigging?

Every fish you catch has a story to tell, and the one you just landed by casting in such a situation was informing you that he has buddies with him up shallow, and that they like the lure you’re throwing.