A lot of you have been told that early-season walleyes are a slam-dunk.   We will admit that catching early post-spawn walleyes is probably about a good as it gets, but you should also know factors beyond control of all but Mother Nature can influence how successful you will be.

Weather still plays a factor during the early season.  If a cold front comes through it will slow things down.  This puts some anglers into high anxiety because they think they’re doing something wrong, just because they’re not getting continuous action. In fact you may be doing everything right, it’s just that the bite has gotten tougher because water is rising, cold fronts have rolled in, the fish are making a transition to deeper water, any number of reasons.

If you do find yourself in a situation where a good bite has turned into no bite, making some simple modifications in your presentation will change your luck.

Typically we find ourselves fishing shallow reefs, creek mouths, sand flats, shallow vegetation, and the downstream sides of dams when the early-season bite is going on.  When conditions slow things down we continue to key on these locations, we just change our presentation.

When walleyes go off the bite during the early season they always go tight to bottom.  This means you have to use a lure or live-bait setup that puts that bait where the fish are.  If we’re using a jig instead of using a vertical approach where we’re hopping the jig off the bottom, we switch to a presentation where the jig is a standup type and we’re dragging the lure across the bottom with the line out a 45-degree angle.

If we’re using a live-bait rig we get rid of the floating head and any spinner blades and go with a plain hook.  The snell length is kept very short, the hook is kept very small and the line we use to tie the snell will be fluorocarbon.

The nice thing about fluorocarbon line is you can use eight or ten-pound test and since it’s totally invisible to the fish you can get away with the heavier line. What does heavier line do for you?  It gives you a better hook set, it lets you play bigger fish without as much worry, and it holds up when it’s dragged all over the rocks on the bottom.

When the early bite gets tough your bait makes a difference.  Leeches should be swimming.  Every 15 or 20 minutes reel in your rig and check by the side of the boat and make sure the bait is still “working” and if it’s the least bit tired, retire it and put on a new one.

If you’re using minnows follow the same routine. Check the bait occasionally and make sure it’s still doing the job.  Walleyes can be enticed by a moving minnow or leech.  If the bait is dead and you’re just dragging it around, you’re only making it tougher on yourself.

Stealth can be a huge factor when the early-season bite goes bad.  This is when you want to fire up the bow-mount electric motor and slip into the spot where you have found walleyes.  The big motor running in shallow water never seems to bother the fish where they’re hungry, but when they’re in a negative mood, you can count on motor noise shutting things down.

We also look at drifting and even anchoring on a tough early-season bite.  When you want to cover some ground and find fish you can set up a drift run and drag a jig and minnow.  We always use the GPS to set up a plot line and occasionally tap the control of the bow-mount electric to maintain a contour line, but the boat drifting quietly over the fish is going to up your odds dramatically. When the fish are there and they just won’t go consider anchoring and using slip-bobbers.  While some anglers think bobber fishing is boring, well, we find it’s only boring when you’re not reeling in fish.

Think of bobbering as the most efficient way to present a small minnow- or leech-tipped jig to negative walleyes.  Use two anchors, one off the bow and one off the stern and make sure the bait is very close to the bottom. We love it when the sky is blue, the weather has been stable, and the bite is on, but that’s not always the case.  When the opposite is true make a few simple modifications in your presentation at the same locations and be confident that any fish that might bite, will bite, your bait.

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