Walleye rookie trip to Willard

[chubby chaser]

Seeing that we have the trout fishing pretty dialed in, my son and I decided to give Willard a try for some different species over the weekend.  Was hoping to get some walleyes for dinner, and maybe a bonus wiper.

Being a complete rookie to walleye acquisition, we left out of the north marina around 9 am to a sunny, beautiful, flat water morning.  headed over to the north dike and tried trolling swim and crank baits with no luck at all.  Got bored of that after an hour and decided to cast for smallies along the dike.  Son and I each got one small fish that volunteered itself off the hook before it made it to the boat.

The bugs became unbearable that close to land so we motored over to the south side of the lake close to the feedlot to see if the bugs were any better.   Dropped bottom bouncers in 12-15 feet of water with green and yellow floating worm harnesses moving at 1.0 mph.  Got hits immediately and managed 2 dinks and a 14" and missed on another couple solid hits.  The 14" was going to come home with us for dinner, but my son attempted to bonk it on the head to kill it and it slipped out of his hands and back into the drink.... lucky day for the fish I guess.
 
By the time we started feeling like we knew what the heck we were doing, it was 90 degrees and we were hot and tired.   One solid snag on something huge took my favorite worm harness so we called it a day and promised a return trip soon.  

[Dirt Bag]

Great report and pictures! Thanks for sharing, even if dinner did get away after aquisition   

There are some of those toothy critters in DC as well, but often they are harder to find. Keep after em!

[fstop2]

Hey CC,
We were there on Sunday taking a bunch of fishing managers from other states, kind of a work/fishing workshop. W we caught quite a few and had about a million bugs in our boats when we were finished. Like you we found our walleye shallow. Usually when you find one, you'll find many more nearby. Keep at it! One quick tip. Once you locate some eyes, keep circling back through the same spot at the same depth, or try fishing with just a 1/8-1/4 ounce jig tipped with a half of a nightcrawler and keep it near the bottom. You can also throw swimbaits and retrieve them slowly through the brush that is now showing up near the shorelines. That was our technique, and it worked well today. We also had boats that just trolled #7 flicker shad in the middle and did well. We tried that in our boat but only caught a few so we switched to the shallows near the dikes and found them. Good luck!

[chubby chaser]

Great report and pictures! Thanks for sharing, even if dinner did get away after aquisition   

There are some of those toothy critters in DC as well, but often they are harder to find. Keep after em!

I was SOOO looking forward to a walleye taco haha, It was like a punch in the gut to see it go over.  Oh well, I know there are more in there and have a better idea of how to get them now.  Thanks for the encouragement