Walleye

[Polarkraft05]

Never caught a walleye before but i hope to this weekend,

the Lake is Called Mozingo, its in Northern missouri, the walleye are stocked in the lake. the lake is long, narrow old creek channel down the middle. its about 1000 acres of water

I know the walleye are spawning in the large rip rap along the dam.

what i dont really know is what to use to fish for them. or how deep or technique

will just about any crank bait work? do i want to knock the bait into the rocks? im sure depth will just depend on the fish, and ill probably start at the shore and work my way deep. but do i want to contact the rocks the whole time? reel steady or jerk?

[Bluebasser86]

I've caught a few walleye from Mozingo, mainly on crankbaits during the summertime. My best suggestion would be to toss a suspending jerkbait at the dam. Something like a rogue in clown color, RXC in whatever baitfish color you want to fish, I've had a lot of luck for walleye with lucky craft slender pointers 97MR's in American shad and Gunmetal Shad and also a 78 pointer in Niashiki (clown) color. I use a jerk jerk pause retrieve most of the time. If that doesn't work you might try a F-11 or F-13 floating rapala minnow or size 7 shad rap or flicker shad with a straight, slow retrieve in the same areas.

[Crestliner2008]

Not sure about your particular area, but here we only have walleye in a river system. Hard jerks and cranks work - sometimes. The most productive presentation we've been using over the past 2 seasons has been a jig & plastic. We started using 1/4 oz. ball jigs with fluke style plastics, bouncing the over the bottom. Now we've switched to heavier jigs (1/2 oz. to 3/4 oz.) and 5" Berkley Flat Back Shads. These are solid 5" bodied baits, shaped like a shad with the flat, paddle tail. Also producing is the same jig style with 5.5" Strike King Shadalicious hollow bellies, rigged the same way. A slow roll across the bottom is dynamite!

Although these baits appear to be way oversized for walleye, they will produce and produce big. If you have any 5 lb.+ walleye in your lake, you're going to get slammed hard with these. Another overlooked, yet productive lure for walleye is the 4" curly tailed grub, again, on a jig head of appropriate size. Hope this is of some help.

[Polarkraft05]

thanks for the tips guys.

is it necessary to use a steel leader?

i have some but didnt know if it was really necessary or not.

[Bluebasser86]

No leader nessasary.

[Marty]

I've caught 100s of walleyes, all but a handful from the Erie Canal, which is not representative of much walleye water.

Having said that, they took a wide variety of crankbaits, both those designed for bass as well as walleye. They also readily hit curly tail grubs on jigheads and those plus the cranks were all I fished with there.

[CoBass]

Walleye spawn at night. If you are fishing during the day look for deeper water adjacent to the rip rap, they will probably be holding there during the day. Spoons and blade baits can be very effective. Make sure they hit the bottom then rip them up a few feet and let them flutter back to the bottom. You can do this vertically or cast out and hop the bait back to the boat. Most hits will occur on the fall so make sure to not keep too much slack in your line when the bait is fluttering back to the bottom. Good luck, Walleye can be a blast when the bite is on.

[Polarkraft05]

well went last night from 8-1045 threw everything at them besides jigs, and soft plastics.

tried casting to shore, casting deeper, trolling in all depths and couldnt catch anything. Maybe im too late to catch them spawning, i didnt have my depth finder so i dont know the temp of the water.

[ww2farmer]

I don't fish for walleyes, but almost every single one I have ever caught was at dusk on crankbaits, including my biggest which was a hair over 8lbs. I think I have caught more on lipless cranks than anything else.

[MCS]

Berkley leeches on a slip float rigg with w bright colored jig head or circle hook.