I Need your help with Walleye.

[TubeDude]

Here is a strange story.  Around three years ago, everyone was catching walleye in Utah Lake.  Just drive the state park at dusk and there were rows of people lining up, catching walleye.  This was sometime in April.  I worried at time time that the walleye in Utah Lake were going to be like the buffalo ca. 1865.  Most people thought that was a silly worry.

Maybe it was, and maybe I'm just not smart enough to find the walleye, but I have not only not caught a walleye in Utah Lake since, but I haven't even seen a walleye caught since.  I don't know what has been different.  It seems to me like they are gone.  But maybe I don't understand the spawn well enough, or else have missed it, or something like that.  I also hear rumors from time to time that a similar event happens at the Provo's mouth in Deer Creek, but have never timed that right, either.

In general I find walleye much more elusive than bass and trout, but that may be that I didn't grow up fishing for them.

Walleye fishing in Utah Lake IS cyclical.  There have been years of overabundant walleye...with everybody catching them.  And there have been other years where even the pros have had trouble scoring.  

Walleye numbers and locations are predicated on at least two things...water levels and food supply.  They roam around the lake looking for more comfortable conditions and a source of eats.  In a shallow lake like Utah Lake there are a lot of variables in any given year.

In years of very low water, there is often a poor spawn of white bass.  And white bass are the primary food source for a lot of Utah Lake fishes...including walleyes.  So fewer white bass means hungry walleyes...with some even thinning up and/or starving to death before the next successful white bass spawn.  A good example was in 2003 to 2004.  At the end of several years of drought, Utah Lake was shallow and there was a very low population of white bass.  Consequently, the bigger walleyes either got skinny and/or starved to death over that winter.  In the spring there were not many walleyes left...and they were skinny...like the one in the attached picture.  And the guys pitching jigs for them in the usual walleye spawning areas were snagging big dead walleyes that had died under the ice during the winter.


On the flip side, when there is a lot of food the walleyes are less likely to fall for something being thrown at them by silly fishermen.  And you can't catch them where they ain't.  Water levels and weather patterns can move the fish around a lot.  Where they showed up to spawn one night might hold no fish at all the next night.  Always good to have some alternate spots and move until you find them.

I have fished Utah Lake walleyes since the 1960s.  In the early days there were no size limits and there were a lot more walleyes.  And in the troutaholic times there were few who actually fished for walleyes.  It was not unusual to catch 10 - 20 fish...during the day (postspawn)...and to keep a limit of fish all over 5-6#.  Today...same story as most other Utah waters.  More fishermen...more pressure...fewer fish.  Here are a couple of pics from the past.