![]() ![]() Spots that top out at the right depth often hold more fish. Later in the year, when fish are holding at a particular depth, they are often simply sliding out over open water to eat and when they move, they don’t move up or slide shallower but simply move out. This is a general rule of thumb that I believe plays the odds and here is why. If most of the fish are holding between twenty and thirty feet of water during this time of year, look for structure that tops out at that depth versus structure that comes up much higher and fishing the twenty to thirty feet of water available on that particular spot. What that means is structure that has a wider range of depth that say tops out in five feet of water often gets used less than a similar reef or hump that tops out at the depth fish are using. Remember as well that as we get later into the summer and fall, fish movements can tend to be more horizontal than vertical. They key for catching walleye this time of year on so many lakes is to get into the rhythm where you know what depth range to search and also know what to look for. Navigating Depth & Structure to Catch Walleye Look for targets where there is good separation between the fish and the bottom and those are usually the fish that make you look good. There are times when these really tight to the bottom fish will bite but often, the fish riding a foot to three feet off the bottom are the biters. Fish that are really tight to the bottom in rocks can often look just like smaller rocks if there isn’t enough separation. So often, if you mark a handful of fish, there are often more that got missed. With a lot of rock reefs and deeper structure that has dips and crevices created by larger rock and boulders, there are blind spots in your electronics where fish get lost in the bottom if they don’t get hit with the cone angle of the sonar so that they can separate from the bottom. When picking apart structure, I can’t tell you how many times I would mark a fish or two going a particular direction and than completely miss the same fish with my electronics when coming back along the same path but from the opposite direction. ![]() Over deeper water, fish might sometimes overlap more but don’t make the mistake of looking for too much because when you find too much, the targets below the boat are often not walleye from my own experience. You might have five marks on the screen depending on how fast the boat is moving and how fast your scroll speed is set but walleyes often seem to set up in loose formations. There are no hard fast rules with fishing and there has to be exceptions but usually, walleyes come across the screen one at a time. Some anglers stop and fish where they see the most suspended fish on the screen or numerous stacked arches coming off a point only to realize later that the fish are whitefish or something else unintended. So often with walleye fishing, if it looks too good to be true… it usually is. The surest way to gauge and judge what is below you is simply time on the water on that particular fishery. Large white suckers in particular often lay across hard bottom breaks and often look just like walleye and you can spend a lot of time fishing for an unintended fish. The same screen on a different body of water however can completely fool you. There are some lakes where if solid targets show up on certain locations a foot to three feet off the bottom, there is a high likelihood that those marks are walleye. What makes target identification even more subjective is that each body of water has it’s own personality. I have beat my head against the wall wasting a lot of time trying to catch “perfect” marks that were not the intended species. ![]() The fish that show up on the screen could be catfish, suckers, tullibee, whitefish, drum or some other fish that isn’t a walleye. On many lakes and reservoirs, there is such a wide variety of biomass. Determining which marks are indeed walleye and exactly which locations to fish takes a little more intuition. Eliminating dead water is relatively easy. What often gets lost however is just exactly what to look for. Keep driving and looking until you mark fish. No arches, no clutter, no bumps on the bottom often means no activity.Ī proven strategy for fishing classic walleye structure is to drive up and down over structure until you see fish on the screen. Bare spots that are void of life are usually a waste of time. When walleye start stacking up on rock reefs, deep points and classic structure that is between fifteen and forty feet of water, you are going to see fish on the screen. ![]() So many situations come late summer and fall where if walleye are present, they are going to show up on marine electronics. ![]()
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