Daylight Walleye

[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