Because sunlight penetrating water is bent at an ever-increasing angle as the sun nears the horizon, sunset occurs about a half hour earlier below water than above. In a similar sense, across much of the walleye belt, what might be called fall feeding mode sets in almost a month before the fall equinox.

This is one of the best of all yearly periods to fish for walleyes. It’s also one of the most overlooked; so an angler can get in on great fishing while most of the rest of the crowd is waiting for colder weather and actual fall to set in.

Many of us at In-Fisherman used to try to judge when this period would begin by factoring in August and early September lunar phases. Now we realize that although lunar phase affects how we approach some of the patterns as they unfold, overall seasonal factors having to do with water temperature and the decreasing amount of daylight are what make this period kick in during the last part of August. That’s just as true in northern Iowa as it is in northern Minnesota, or in southern Saskatchewan, or southern and northwestern Ontario. Farther south into Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, it takes until the end of September and into October for this period to begin.

Weedbeds are dying down and thinning, exposing young-of-the-year panfish—bluegills, crappies, bullheads, and perch—just when they’re reaching a size that’s appealing to walleyes. Meanwhile, in open water, young-of-the-year pelagic baitfish like alewives and shad are reaching the same stage, while numbers of bigger baitfish have been somewhat reduced over summer, increasing competition for them at a time when walleyes are beginning to feed heavily in preparation for late fall and winter. Important patterns set up in open water and along and on main-body-of-water reefs abutting open water.

While we no longer use moon phases to determine when to begin taking advantage of this period, we still judge how we’re going to approach much of our fishing by considering them. In-Fisherman Editor In Chief Doug Stange suggests that one of the best options at this time is to fish at night—and that means moonlight, or the lack thereof. Stange: “All the predatory fish we fish for feed more effectively at night when a little light’s present, so it’s helpful for the moon to be up. Doesn’t have to be a full moon; even a sliver of light often is enough to get fish feeding.

“This year the full moon is wasted in a walleye sense in early August, the 6th to be exact. That’s too early for the seasonal factors mentioned a moment ago to have fully set in. That would be a great week to fish for muskies at night, though. The 20th is the new moon. Muskies and walleye both are going to be less effective feeding at night (not enough light), so that’s prime time to fish for them during the day on prime waters. I wouldn’t begin night-fishing for walleyes for another week.“

Several potential strong daytime patterns should be going by the last part of August, according to Stange, depending on the lake or reservoir in question. Trolling open water is one top option in lakes with open-water forage fish. Dark, windy days also sometimes move walleyes onto shallow reefs. And dark days can also spur fishing activity along the deep edge of weedbeds. On sunny days, on the other hand, the reef pattern and the deep weededge patterns often develop for a short time just before sunset or just before sunrise. Those feeding periods are short but can be intense.

By the last week of August, Stange says, we have enough light at night for consistent night activity to begin. Stange: “Most of the night options we’ve discussed at length in the past should kick in about that time. It’s generally too early for pier fishing on the Great Lakes, although some rivermouths might attract fish; but shorecasters in most other areas can get almost a month’s head start on most of the rest of the crowd.”

Shorecasters should check current areas. Also check shallow main-lake or reservoir flats with rocks, gravel, and weeds—admittedly, some prime spots will still be too weed-choked to be fishable. In shallow prairie lakes, the front face of reedbeds (actually rushes) often draw fish. Also at times, shallow riprapped areas hit by the wind during the day attract fish after dark.

Longline-trolling is another option at night. Stange: “On most waters that’s the way to go, especially as the season progresses—once we get past about mid-September and weedgrowth has substantially receded.

“I’d like to focus on a related pattern that just rarely gets fished. It develops in what were dense weedbeds in main-lake areas. These vegetated areas are still too thick to troll effectively, unless you stay along the edge. I monitor these beds as the season progresses, fishing through them or along the edge for walleyes, pike, largemouths and, at times, smallmouths and muskies, depending on the lake or reservoir in question. Most of that fishing is during the day.

“By late August a lot of the coontail is in dense clumps, but usually it’s become matted and there are distinct edges to it—so you can fish around it. Softer stringy weeds usually have died down. Meanwhile, cabbage, which is attractive to baitfish and walleyes, usually is still standing tall, but many of the leaves have died off the stalks, leaving sparser cover.

If I’m on a lake and want to fish new areas at night, I always try to look at the weed conditions during the day, before fishing at night.

“At night these walleyes aren’t hugging bottom. Indeed, sometimes they’re feeding right below the surface over 12 to 14 feet of water. More common holding depths, though, range from about 6 to 12 feet. They’re patrolling through the beds, moving and scattering the baitfish and staying slightly deeper than the bait in order to silhouette it against the surface light. Walleyes have a vision advantage over most baitfish after dark.

“The best bet is to have had a pretty good wind blowing into a bed during the day. This allows walleyes to stay shallow and still be comfortable, and it also bends the weedstalks down—lays them over several feet, creating an open-water zone above the weeds. The weeds are all laying down with the direction of the wind, so it’s best to fish with the wind or into the wind to take advantage of that zone and more easily also run lures between weedstalks.”

Stange has been fishing this pattern for over 25 years. Early on, his favorite lure was a doctored #13 Floating Husky Rapala. He drilled a hole in the balsa lure and added a few lead shot to get the lure to cast farther and get a bit more depth. With the introduction of the Rapala Husky Jerk, that classic lure became one of his most effective options. The #12 Husky Jerk casts well and suspends when it’s stopped. Still, the best retrieve at night, according to Stange, is almost always a slow, steady, straight retrieve. Let the fish sense the lure and get a good shot at it—no more than an occasional pause.

Stange: “Even at night, I think walleyes usually sense the presence of the plug visually and then subsequently use their lateral line. I want the plug to give off even more wobble than it has right out of the box, so I take pliers and pinch the nose eye just a bit flatter and then bend it down just a bit. This lowers the pull point just enough to make the plug wobble more distinctively. Another popular plug in this category is the Smithwick Super Rogue.

“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.