Walleye Hunting When The Weather Gets Nasty

One of the most common “rules” of walleye fishing that I hear is that the fishing shuts down when the weather gets bad.. thunder and lightning are the enemy of the walleye angler, and it is hopeless to venture out during or after any storm event. While I would concur that venturing out when the lightning is flashing is just plain stupid, my personal experience is that there is no certainty that foul weather will diminish the fishing on your favorite waters. Some of our best nights have been forays out to the local lake after a good storm.

The last two weeks have been a classic example. If you are reading the Walleyeguy Blog you know that my son and I have been fishing in a local walleye league. We entered our last night of league last week one point behind another team for the fourth and final spot in the end of the year fish-offs. We needed to beat them last Tuesday in order to take fourth overall. So we had only a few days to do any kind of pre-fishing, and the weather was less than desirable. Wind speeds on our first afternoon trip were 20 mph with gusts up to 30. Suffice it to say that boat control was an issue. So rather than toss it in for the evening, we focused on large mid-lake structures that we knew held fish in the past. This allowed us to either drift or troll over these big shallow areas without having to worry about following exact contours. What we also knew was that when the wind starts howling like it was that day, the fish move right on top of these mid-lake flats. We found fish pulling live bait rigs, but when we switched over to shallow running crankbaits we started catching fish with encouraging consistency.

The top of the main flat we were working is about 6 to 8 feet deep over the area we trolled. While effective colors will vary from lake to lake, we stuck with darker colors because of the darker conditions. Our weapon of choice when covering water this shallow is the shallow running shad rap (SSR5) from Rapala. There are a wide variety of crankbaits that would be effective in this situation. The key is simply finding a bait that will run just above the lake bottom when trolled at 2 – 3 mph.

On relatively calm nights we would focus our efforts on the edges of the sharp drops, but on wild days with a nasty wind like we experienced that night, the fish will be scattered all over the top of the structure. We maintained no particular pattern and picked up walleyes all night moving between 2.5 and 2.8 mph. The following night was just as bad with respect to the wind, but on this evening we had the added joy of a rather dark and menacing storm front. A debate raged in our boat over the direction of the front. I was sure it was passing to the north while Junior insisted that the edge of it was slowly creeping our direction. When our view of the north end of the lake disappeared behind a wall of ice-cold rain, we knew it was time to buckle up. The front was on top of us in minutes bringing with it a little extra wind just for good measure. But, since neither of us wanted to be the first to say “to hell with it”, we continued fishing and we continued catching fish through the worst of it.

We know that the walleye has very light sensitive eyes. They prefer to do their hunting under the protection of darkness. When we go out with the intent to pull crankbaits we generally launch the boat shortly before sunset. As soon as the light diminishes, walleyes will venture up to feed in the shallows where they can ambush their prey using their sight advantage in the dark. Strong wind will effectively cut the light and allow walleyes to go shallow earlier in the day than they might normally venture out to chase the baitfish that get blown up into the shallows. Add overcast skies to a strong wind and you have a cocktail that can be ideal for chasing walleyes in shallow water.

I don’t want to give away too much about the rest of our week, you can read my blog to see how the fish-offs go, but we managed to get enough fish last week to outweigh the other guys and take over fourth. We were “fortunate” enough to have the same brutal wind and rain during league night and used everything we had learned from our previous outings to find enough shallow fish to outweigh the competition. So rather than letting the wind and rain spoil your fishing outing, grab some extra rain gear and head out into the tempest to find some of those walleyes lurking in the shallows.

- Tony Andrews (WalleyeGuy Blog)

Tony Andrews makes his home in Northern Minnesota as a Technology Coordinator by trade, but he spends his summers fishing area lakes with his family. As a typical Minnesota fisherman, he likes to put his thoughts and experiences in writing on his WalleyeGuy Blog to provide a window in to the real world of fishing… the one in which many days on the lake produce nothing, and most of the fish are average-sized at best. His walleye fishing tips and advice are all based on tactics that he has found to be successful.