How to catch the shallow-water walleye that most anglers overlook

TROLLING STRUCTURE

Early mornings and late afternoons are great times to fish shallow structure such as sand, gravel, rocks and sunken islands. During those periods, you’ll often find both resident walleye that cruise the areas all day and fish that have moved in from deeper water to feed. Heavy cloud cover can often cause the fish to become even more active, making the morning bite last longer and the afternoon bite start earlier. Similarly, the combination of waves and murky, churned up water from increased wind will often trigger a strong bite that can last for the duration of the breezy weather.

When fishing shallow structure, the ticket to success is running bottom bouncers with spinner rigs baited with leeches or nightcrawlers. Spinner rigs allow you to cover a lot of water without getting snagged too often. Start trolling at around 1.2 miles per hour, and if the bite is slow, speed up to two miles per hour. Since the fish will be active in these locations, use bigger spinner blades and the largest live baits you can find.

As the season progresses through the middle to the end of summer, try running pencil-shaped minnow baits. A few of my go-to lures include the Rapala X-Rap and Husky Jerk, Storm ThunderStick MadFlash and Berkley Flicker Minnow (above). I like lures about three inches long, in perch, silver, black/silver and chartreuse. I troll the cranks a little faster than the spinner rigs, at around two to two and a half miles per hour.

Another great option later in the summer is using bottom bouncers to pull slow-death rigs baited with half a nightcrawler. As the name suggests, troll these even slower than the spinner rigs, at 0.8 to 1.2 miles per hour.