My 1st Walleye!! Lucky to be a big one!!

[araret]

Being a landlocked boy from Toronto, I have never fished for walleye before, and usually just go for shallow watered bass and pike from shore. Recently in Calgary, I met up with Andrew, a nice fellow fisherman on an Alberta fishing forum. On the last Saturday, I went fishing with Andrew and 2 of his friends on his Malibu boat.

We started off the day pretty slow after a long drive to the reservoir. We fooled around a bit and didn't find a good spot. We had tried jigging, pickerel rigs, and also casting spoons, but there was nothing. Then we tried out the tip that my friend Andrew had from another fishing friend, which is to troll the edge of the lake, where there was a small ledge drop.

I put an old, but unused Tail Dancer for the trolling, while Andrew and his friends were using various Rapala lipless crank-baits in a variety of colours. I caught the first walleye of the day on the diver, which was also my first one ever. The walleyes were very pretty looking, but their teeth are JUST AS BAD AS PIKE (I'll get to this later on).

After trolling for a couple of hours, we all had some pretty nice action on walleyes. Andrew caught a 50cm keeper, while the rest of us all caught smaller ones not quite the size limit. Then suddenly, all we caught were little jacks. It was like we struck a bell, and for the next couple of hours, all we got were tiny 1/2lb jacks. It was pretty funny because we were trolling, and it just feels exactly like weed when you have a tiny guy on your lure.

Then when it got to a later day, I put on my newly bought $15 Livetarget perch. I knew that there were lots of perch in the lake, so it should be a good bait. I threw it beside the boat to troll for a bit, and within 2 minutes, I caught 2 jacks (and of course a couple of nasty scratches on the beautiful paint job of the lure!!). A couple minutes later, and another walleye fell for it! I am truly sold on the Live targets bait now, since at the end of the day, I caught 5 fish on it, all within a matter of an hour, trolling for it.

Then as the sun slowly began its journey down, I switched back onto my Tail Dancer diver. Trolling around on the same ledge we've been going around on, we assumed that the fish would start heading up from the deeper shelf up to the shallows to feed. The divers usually snag weeds a lot, since it dives deep. And I would be cleaning weeds off of my lure as we troll around the lake. However, one particularly large weed didn't really want to come to the boat, and I soon had a mammoth on the end of my lure!

The huge mommy walleye was pretty big, and didn't want to come up to the edge of the boat at all. When we finally got it up and into the net, it bounced and floundered around so much that it jumped back out of the net! Luckily the fish landed in the boat, were we managed to grab onto it. It weighted 6.5lbs and 27". It was my first time fishing for walleye, and I have to admit that it was a huge momma! I loved it!

Here's some pictures for you guys. I brought the momma home and cleaned it nicely into fillets. Also cut my index finger badly on its teeth while handling it.

[jwm]

Wow very nice filets! And you were worried about not finding any fish in Alberta, looks like you're doing just fine!

[araret]

Thanks a lot! I was worried for the first couple of months when all I could access was the bow river, and I didn't know a single thing about river fishing. Now I've learned a few things, and managed to catch my 1st Rainbow, Brown, laker and walleye, all in Alberta! But I'll be back home permanently in Ontario by this weekend, so I'll definitely be hooking into some nice bass pretty soon. Too bad i never got a chance to catch a ling-cod or burbot here in alberta. Heard that they were suppose to be tastey. and me love eating fish...

[KenReece]

Great looking Eyes!! Probably pretty tasty in that cold water up there too!

[Hungry]

Wow looks like you had a great time!

[Woody]

It's always good to catch species you've never had before, and that is a right lump you had!

[Sanj]

pretty sure there are ling cod here in ontario. i remember as a kid at a cottage (hay lake or bay, can't remember) and the adults caught them fishing real deep by the side of a rockface.