Walleye Behavior in Natural Lakes

Many Canadian shield lakes fall into this category, though they differ somewhat in landform, fertility, and water temperature.

Stocked Weedy Environments—If it lives like a bass, eats like a bass in areas where bass usually live, is it a bass? Not necessarily. Where walleyes are stocked into weedy natural lakes, they must adapt to local conditions. If forage, cover, and habitat dictate a lifestyle in and around leafy cover, so be it. We have weed walleyes.

Moderately fertile, weedy natural lakes often lack sufficient rocky spawning grounds for successful walleye reproduction. If the fish can’t migrate upstream to clean rock and gravel shoals, the population must be supported by stocking. They may attempt to spawn along silted-in gravel and stone shorelines, but nothing good comes from it. Following the attempt, they move back to developing weed-cover for much of the year.

During postspawn and presummer, walleyes roam weedflats in the 6- to 12-foot range. They tend to lay low and inactive during the day, but respond to longline trolling with minnow-imitators at night. Some fish may move out over the relatively shallow basin—usually in less than 40 feet of water—to feed on emerging mayflies during a June hatch. Suspended baitfish forage, however, generally is lacking. Once the thermocline solidifies and pushes fish shallow, usually in July, life centers along the deep weedline throughout summer.

Probing pockets, points, and turns along the deep edge is key to success. Pitching a jig and plastic tail or jig and livebait tickles the weededge and drops down between stalks. Brittle cabbage weeds are easiest to work through, generally breaking clean when a sharp wrist snap of the rod is used to free the open-hook jig. In denser, softer coontail, however, weedless jigs often are necessary to penetrate and slither between stalks; fouled lures tend to uproot the stalks when pressure is applied. In extremely dense cover, backtroll weedless livebait rigs parallel to the base of the deep weededge, moving in close enough to tickle the fringe without frequent fouling. Lowlight periods tend to outproduce midday hours.

In fall, weeds die. Walleyes may linger along the deeper outer fringe of green weeds as long as the weeds remain healthy. Or, with the dissolution of the thermocline, walleyes may, in fact, drop deep into newly reoxygenated depths, relating to any form of deep hump or tip of a point meeting the basin—just as walleyes in classic lakes do, providing that deep forage like perch or minnows is present. If so, deep livebait rigging or jigging excels. This is one time of year that weed walleyes act like classic walleyes.

As a general rule, walleyes in small weedy lakes are more territorial and less mobile than those in larger, more intricately structured waters. Fish may remain in one general weedy area all summer, compared to variable patterns and frequent long forays around the lake in larger waters.