Daylight Walleye

[reason162]

Never seen a walleye in person, want to check off this bucket list fish...

This time of year, do they tend to suspend or are they tighter to bottom?

Not asking for any locations or even lake info, I expect nothing but skunkfests until I put my time in!

[NJ219bands]

Jig the bottom at the Lambertville wing dam and Fireman’s Eddy. I caught 77 walleyes to 7 lb 12 oz in the fall at the Duck Island power plant on jigs many years ago.

[Mikey topaz]

Deep and close to the bottom now, then shallow come spring..
They can be caught multiple different ways, now is a good time if you don’t mind the cold. Try bouncing jigs, and throwing plastic shads.

[ScowardNJ]

The walleyes move around depending on the season and water temps. This time of the year with the cold water they are usually deeper. We get em anywhere from 20' to 50'. Rocky/gravelly structure is key. They are on the rocks and gravel along any point, drop off, or boulder field.
Switch between casting and vertical jigging to see what they want that day. W7 and W9 jigging raps and blade baits like thinfishers and binskies are great for vertical jigging and casting. Casting and bouncing plastics along the bottom on 3/8 to 1 oz. jigs is good also. Find a rocky drop off and pound the bottom working the entire piece from top to bottom. Bottom contact is essential. Put your time in and you will find em. Good luck man!

[bulletbob]

By nature, walleyes are bottom oriented, and thats where they will typically be. Rocky bottom.. They eat Sculpins, Darters, Crayfish, Madtoms, Stonecats, Hellgrammites. stuff like that, especially in rivers and streams.. They are usually around rocky bottom unless the water being fished doesn't have many rocky areas, and then you look for drop offs, deeper weed lines and such. One exception is big lakes with Alewives.. Then they act like most other predators, and spend a lot of their time suspended following the large schools of bait..

In the rivers this time of year, I would jig with plastics. they hit hair jigs as well, and nothing is better than a hair jig with a live minnow if casting from shore.

I would go before first light, and fish until about 8, maybe 9 am, or start around 4 in the afternoon and into the dark.. They will hit anytime, but in 30 years of Walleye fishing, 95% of the fish I have caught were hooked before 7:30 am in the morning, or in the hour before dusk into twilight just before dark, depending on time of year.. In winter, time of day is somewhat less important, as the sunlight does not penetrate into the water as deeply, due to the angle of the sun.. Still, mid day is the worst time to target them...

They aren't hard to catch when you find them, which as with any fishing is the biggest problem.. In my 37 years in NJ until 1991, they basically only existed in the delaware river. Today there are a lot more options in waters to catch them, thanks to NJ's excellent DEC... bob

[reason162]

Thanks guys!

I'll stick to relatively deep bottom structure to start. Packing jig heads + plastics, lipless, blade baits...hoping for a weather window to launch the yak next week.