Spring can be a great time to chase some giant Green Bay walleye's if your looking for your next trophy for the wall. Knowing where to look and how to target them is the key piece of information we are all looking for.
The bay is a magical place to fish in the spring time, you can follow the spawn from the fox river north as far as you can go.
The when varies a little week to week every year but they will return to the same areas year after year making them predictable. Get out there and find there shallow spawning areas and not to far away will be a pile of walleyes looking for food.
3 Tips to catch spring walleye
Go into search and destroy mode
Get shallow
Be aggressive
Spend some time on the hunt. Don't let yourself just fly out to last years good waypoint and start casting. Walleyes pack up thick in the spring and they are on the move as they are looking for food. Its common to see packs of 20-30 fish tightly grouped up and roaming. Spend some time with side imaging and find an area that has several big groups roaming in it and get your self into a good position to cast or troll over that area.
I like to play the wind here and do most of my looking directly into the wind so when I see a few packs I can shut down my big motor and turn sideways to the wind and drift over the top of those fish casting as we go.
Don't spend to much time on one pod or groups of fish. If they are not actively feeding they might be reluctant to chow. Close by there might be an active group of fish willing to jump in the boat. I frequently move from one group to the next looking for an active school.
Get shallow! most of my days are spent in 6 feet or less. Shallow water will get stirred up by the wind a bit and those particles in the water will trap heat from the sun and that water will warm up faster. In the spring walleye will be looking for the warmest water they can easily find. These are cold blooded animals when the water is cold they slow down and can't hunt as well. Also there food happens to like that warming water as well so they will be up there shallow chasing the bait!
I do mean GET SHALLOW. Its not uncommon for me to be fishing in 3 feet of water casting to even shallower water in the middle of the day. Bright sun Clear skies flat calm whacking walleye in 2-3 feet of water. when fishing that shallow i change my angle of approach to my jigging snaps to less of a tall vertical pop to a shorter lower angle pop making it more of a forward action than an up action.
Post spawn fishing can be amazing if you land on a hungry pack of fish roaming a flat looking for there next meal. Get aggressive when you land on a pod. faster shorter cast target them as quick as possible. Get that bait out there fast and start snapping fish a bit quicker to get multiple fish in the area fired up, if you can get 2 or 3 fish chasing one of them will kick out and grab it out of competition. Get your fish in and get your bait back out there as fast as possible. Try not to waste any time because those fish are on the move, if you get one there are more and they wont hang around to long.
If your with a buddy have him cast right where you caught that fish, action can bring action and if fish see other fish feeding they will stick around thinking there is an easy meal and you want your bait to be that meal. Wait to long or fight your fish to long they will spook or leave.
I often get razzed about how I fight my fish, I crank my drag and haul them in to get them away from the school as fast as possible. The longer they thrash in that area it will spook other fish away. Get em in , Get a Photo and get back out there, you'll find yourself getting fish back to back more often this way!!!
Get away from the pack of boats!
Last thing I can add is don't just go pile into a group of boats because you think they are on fish.
More often than not ill go out and around a group or way inside shallower than the pack to find the fish that those boats have spooked out of the area.
Think about it, at one point a boat or 2 pulled in there and found a pile of fish to cast on and then more boats showed up then more.. and so on well those fish might get spooked out or in and there was at one point more fish on that spot but now they have moved.. ill be the guy to go find those fish and try and pick some off before the crowd descends on me.
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