“I’ve done a lot of reading about fish senses, trying to understand how it is they actually sense lures and then finally decide to take them. I’ve also done some sight-fishing for walleyes at certain times during the year, using both crankbaits and swimbaits. When walleyes get into an area with prey they seem to randomly move in an area in search of them. But every so often they always just stop and hover and hold motionless in place, usually about 2 to 4 feet below the surface. This probably allows them to use their vision to spot the slightest movements around them.

“The lateral line sense is for close-quarters sensory perception, having to do with low-frequency vibrations. So, once a walleye sees something interesting, it steadily swims toward the offering, gets behind it, and then speeds up. As the lure or baitfish enters a zone about 2 to 3 feet in front of the fish, I don’t think vision is so important anymore. It looks to me as though—and some of the scientific reading I’ve done suggests—the lateral line sense kicks in and the fish almost goes on autopilot, relying on that sense to make the final judgment about whether the thing should be eaten. It’s lateral line sense, not vision, that most often tells a fish to break off the chase and avoid the lure at the last second—or to go ahead and eat it.

“I think that’s the reason certain crankbaits and especially swimbaits often so completely fool walleyes. I mean a walleye will follow up on a swimbait and completely engulf it way over half the time. That means the lateral line is getting perfect feedback from something that feels perfectly natural as the following fish closes in. That’s the reason you don’t want to be jerking a lure at night unless you need to snap off weeds. Slow and steady most of the time. As I’ve said, in the dark, walleyes first silhouette a lure or baitfish against residual surface light, then swim close and let the lateral line sense take over.”

So, no surprise, swimbaits also are highly effective at night, a favorite being a combination Stange has written about extensively for fishing during the day. “You don’t want to fish too small at night; walleyes need to see and then feel the offering,” he says. “So I either toss a 4-inch shad-bodied bait on a 3/8-ounce head or a 5-inch bait on a 1/2-ounce head. The 3/8-ounce lure fishes well at about 2 to 4 feet deep, while the heavier option fishes well from about 4 down to 8 feet. Depth control is the primary factor, but vibration is just as important in getting fish to finally strike.

“Another top lure for fishing weedgrowth is the Rapala Tail Dancer, either a #5 or a #7. These lures are a bit small for my taste at night, but it’s such a hard-wobbling, throbbing lure that fish feel it well and it also shakes weeds superbly. If you hang a piece of weed, just give the rod tip a hard snap and much of the time the lure will shake itself free. That’s also true with the swimbait combo, but not quite so true of the Husky Jerk.”

If wind speed is at least 8 to 10 mph, Stange positions at the upwind side of a weedbed, points the bow into the wind, and makes a controlled drift through or alongside the bed, using the trolling motor to keep the bow pointed into the wind, casting with the wind past the back of the boat. In heavier wind, dropping a driftsock is an option. In lighter wind, start downwind of a bed and use the trolling motor to move slowly up through the weeds, casting into the wind.

Stange: “Make medium casts—say about 90 feet—so if you foul on a weed and can’t snap it off, you don’t waste a lot of time reeling in to deal with it. I use a medium-fast-action medium-power spinning rod 7 feet long, coupled with a reel that matches. My line is Berkley FireLine, 14-pound test, a no-stretch line that helps me feel how the lure’s running and makes it easier to snap weeds off a lure.

“I add about a 4-foot section of 20-pound fluorocarbon leader at the end of the FireLine, because the increased diameter of this line allows me to grab the line to easily handle fish at boatside or once they’re in the net—but tying direct to the FireLine is fine. I use a plain Cross-Lok snap on the terminal end of my line to make changing lures easy. Keep the rod tip from 10 to 11 o’clock and make slow, steady retrieves, only snapping the tip if you have to get rid of weedgrowth.”

The best explanation of how to take advantage of moonlight when fishing at night during this period was offered many years ago by Ivan Burandt, for over 30 years one of the top guides on Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota.

On the night of a full moon, the sun sets at about the same time that the moon rises. Then the moon rises about an hour later each evening. So, two days after the full moon you might have to wait several hours after sunset for the moon to rise. Burandt found that those hours usually were a dead period—that’s when he’d switch to fishing the period from midnight through sunrise. He missed the sunset bite, but could count on a manageable night of fishing. The moon was already up when he got on the water and stayed up, or was just setting as he fished through the sunrise bite.

If he only had a few hours to fish on a given night, he’d time his fishing to begin with moonrise. Basically, any time he could fish through a sunset period and not have to wait long for the moon to rise, he did that. Overall, he preferred fishing through the sunrise bite, in part because he found there was much less fishing pressure then.

During dark-moon periods, he either didn’t fish or would limit himself to three hours or so in the early morning, so he could fish through sunrise. He admitted, though, that most anglers would find it much easier to just hit the sunset bite and then see how the fishing developed after that. Or hit the sunset bite, then head in and get some sleep before rising early and also fishing the sunrise bite.

All this talk about moonlight influencing walleye behavior begs the question of how weather affects this fishing. On a cloudy day, Burandt found that good fishing often began as much as an hour before sunset. Some cloud conditions don’t eliminate the effects of moonlight. On some cloudy nights there’s plenty of diffuse light. Windy, rainy, nasty weather almost always makes night-fishing difficult, although a bite often develops at sunset and sunrise in these conditions. Moonrise and moonset can, by the way, be calculated via several online sites, including one from the Farmer’s Almanac: almanac.com/rise/index.php.

This can be a great time to use slipfloats, too, both during the day and at night. Walleyes are still using wing dams in bigger rivers, and in smaller rivers, the fish often are holding in fast, skinny water. Our option here, though, is something new to try during a period when few anglers are on the water, except on Labor Day weekend.