In real estate, the three key words are location, location, location. Location determines the ultimate value of a home, business, or structure, no matter how well it’s built or how good it looks. If a property lies in a poor location, its value is suspect at best.

The same principles apply to walleyes, the structures they use, and the lake areas in which they live. Spots can look good, but if they’re not seasonally correct, they may hold few or no walleyes. Conversely, if the area of the lake is seasonally correct, even a meager looking spot may hold loads of fish—for a while. Then, when it’s time to move, walleyes do so without hesitation. If their food moves, if the water grows too warm, or if better opportunities arise in another portion of the lake, on to the next spot travels the movable beast.

To determine walleye location, we must first seek lake areas that provide suitable habitat and food during the current time of year and then evaluate additional options within those areas to determine the likeliest spots for fish to use—a challenging task when you consider the walleye’s propensity to move.

Next to Great Lakes trout and salmon (the freshwater transplants of their far-ranging saltwater cousins), walleyes are perhaps the most migratory of all freshwater gamefish—at least on an annual basis. Other fish may travel farther in their lifetimes; we’ve all heard stories of carp, sturgeon, and other aquatic voyagers who miraculously survive a heroic multiyear passage through a dozen dams spanning a thousand miles, only to wind up on the unfortunate end of some bank fisherman’s handline. Make a good tear-jerker of a movie script, it would: The End of the Line. Sort of a Titanic with fins, producible for a lot less money in a lot shorter package.

Walleyes may not be able to match such fishes’ all-time distance records, but when their cumulative seasonal movements spanning a lifetime of travel are tallied, sufficient mileage gets accrued for at least one sequel. Because walleyes are always on the move; they’re aquatic nomads of the percid kind. And to catch them, it’s necessary to follow them. Just about the time you become comfortable with their locational patterns, adios, muchachos—they’re off on another quest for food, habitat, or some whim of walleye wanderment.

As frustrating as walleyes can be, if you anticipate their needs, it’s possible to use their migratory nature against them, to your advantage. No better example exists than at spawning time, when walleyes often make long-distance movements of dozens of miles, over a hundred miles in some instances, to reach historic spawning grounds. In spring, feeder streams or rivers with rocky substrates; windswept rocky shorelines; the faces of riprapped causeways and dams; and shallow rock reefs poking to or near the surface all draw walleyes to their instinctive destinations. The urge to spawn on the same site every year brings walleyes full circle, back to their point of origin, whether they were naturally spawned or stocked.

Think of it: Every spring, walleyes literally go far out of their way to pack into easily recognizable areas where we anxiously anticipate their arrival. It may be possible to toss out an anchor and wait for their arrival if their point of concentration is small or narrow enough. Fish passing to and through narrows, rivers, and other shooting galleries become targets of extreme opportunity, at least for a short while.

Have fun while it lasts, however, because as soon as spawning’s over and the main body of their environment begins to warm, walleyes hightail it for food, cover, and habitat opportunities. How far and how fast they travel depends on what the lake, river, or reservoir has to offer. But one thing’s for sure: They don’t stay in limited spawning areas for long. Once their primal urges are satisfied, they kick into high gear because otherwise they will run out of food and space. They must move to survive.

It’s comforting, however, to know that you can begin your fishing season pretty sure about where the walleyes are. Walk the shoreline at night along likely spawning areas, shining a flashlight in the water. Walleye eyes reflect the light and tell you how many, how large, and how intensely the fish are clustered in the immediate area. Even if you don’t begin night fishing, you’ll know they’ll be nearby once daylight comes. Simply interpret the available cover or structural options and fish them with appropriate presentations. You gain the confidence that comes from knowing that fish are somewhere nearby.

Even as postspawn walleyes begin dispersing toward summer habitat, it’s possible to anticipate their movements, plot their course, and plan your ambush along the way. The first few adjacent structures begin to draw large numbers of fish. Then the next few structures down the lake. And so on and so on. In expansive lakes and reservoirs, simply knowing which sections of the lake hold the most walleyes on a seasonal basis is one of the biggest keys to catching them. They group, say “ready, set, go,” and begin the great race to summer haunts from a known position. Every year. The pace of the race may vary from season to season, but the outcome is predictable. Here to there and back again. No matter how far and how fast they roam, they always return home.

If you like a high degree of predictability in your feature attraction, then walleyes may just win the award for best screen play by a movable beast. After all, Oscar was a fish long before he was a Hollywood statuette.