The morning is a great time to fish for walleye. In the morning, you can usually find good numbers of walleye that will move into the shallows to find an easy meal. Some good areas to fish are weed lines, points, timber, rocky shorelines and shallow flats. The best areas usually have quick access to deeper water. While live bait will definitely work, most anglers prefer casting or trolling crankbaits as they search for the active walleye. The aggressive bite usually doesn’t last that long in the shallows, so if you’re not getting bit shallower, you may need to go deeper and fish slower.
Hit the Shallows With Search Baits and Cover Water
There are times when walleye move into the shallows to feed very aggressively. The problem is finding the right spot where a school of walleye is feeding aggressively. The key to this technique is to fish with search baits such as crankbaits, scrounger jigheads with your favorite soft plastic, grubs, ringworms or one of your other favorite search baits for walleye. Cast along rocky shorelines or the shallower water near points, reefs and deep water shorelines. The shallow water that is located near deep water will be more effective. A lot of times, you’ll have a school of walleye move in from 20 to 30 feet of water and they may be feeding as shallow as just a few feet of water because that is where the bait is hanging out. After they grab their meal, they will move back out into deeper water. You are going to need to cover water and keep your baits moving while searching for this feeding frenzy. It’s similar to covering water like you would when fishing for bass or northern pike. This technique works in the early morning and late evening.
Hit Your Hot Spots Right Away
Because the early morning is a great feeding time for walleye, this is often a time that walleye anglers will search out new spots to try to add more spots that they can fish on any given lake or river in the future. If you want to make sure you catch fish though, go to your hot spots right away in the morning because walleye usually are very active first thing in the morning. You may be able to catch your limit within minutes if you are on the hot spot first thing in the morning.
Use an Aggressive Jigging Motion
If you are jigging for walleye, try a more aggressive jigging motion. This will work well for attracting aggressive walleye over to your bait. When the aggressive bite slows down, you may have to slow down your presentation to keep getting bites.
The Early Morning is a Great Time To Troll
Trolling can be very effective because you can cover a lot of water and find a lot of walleye that are willing to chase down a bait in the early morning hours. Crankbaits, scrounger baits and spinner rigs will all work well.
Just Get Out and Fish
The morning is a great time to fish, so if you just want to go out and use live bait on a jighead, that will work great too!
