fishing planet rocky lake golden trout spinner

Walleyes Chewing White BassĮspecially throughout the southern and western portions of the Midwestern Walleye Belt, many waters co-exist with sizeable populations of both walleyes and white bass. But left to the forage opportunities of each individual body of water, walleyes will key into young-of-the-year perch, bluegills, and other available minnows-and later on-emerging bug life out of the mud.

Still, walleyes grab them up with reckless abandon. Shiner-profile crankbaits will also work but recently seined and lively shiners consistently outperform everything else.īut what about the rest of the year? ‘Crawlers and leeches take over after the jig and shiner bite ends, yet most waters don’t have nightcrawlers or ribbon-tailed leeches swimming around. At this time, nothing beats a jighead and a shiner or shiner-mimicking plastic paddletail, split-tail minnow or curly-tailed grub. With the silvery protein-packed minnows running rivers and shallows on lakes, reservoirs, and rivers, it’s one of nature’s signals to match-the-hatch. In the Upper Midwest portion of the Walleye Belt, it’s not hard to figure out that from ice-out until the water hits about 60-degrees or so that the predominant walleye forage will be shiners. This brings up one of the most important factors of becoming a consistently successful angler, and that’s figuring out where, when, and what walleyes are feeding on.

Steve “Zippy” Dahl knows how to catch big walleyes from fisheries where white bass swim. Guides will tell you that a lot of strange things have ended up in the grinder or guts bucket over the years. Besides minnows and young-of-the-year perch, panfish, and minnows, it’s not uncommon to find such odd creatures as juvenile snakes, crawfish, frogs, even mice and small birds in the gullets of filleted walleyes. Anyone who has spent time at the fish cleaning station will tell you that walleyes are opportunistic feeders beyond imagination.

Fishing planet rocky lake golden trout spinner