Open Water Walleyes-The New Frontier
by Cory Schmidt

Just a quick note about an unbelievable (and untapped) bite that's just begun to develop over the past few nights . . . trophy walleyes feeding on ciscoes, 15 to 25 feet down over 90 to 100 feet of water.

Big Eyes
Last night, between 8pm and 11pm we put 11 walleyes in the boat, five of them were between 25 and 28-inches.

Here's the pattern-- Get out on a deep, clear lake with lots of dwarf ciscoes (3 to 6-inches). Toward dusk, look for signs of ciscoes dimpling the surface. Last few nights we've trolled with 300 feet of 14/4 Fireline and #7 to #9 Shad Raps, blue & white or blue & chrome. We'll talk more on all this soon. But just wanted to give you fine folks a heads-up on what may well be the best trophy walleye pattern there is.

More On The Subject
  Over the past several years on this suspended walleye pattern, a few other items of note have revealed themselves. (For the whole lowdown on this pattern, take a look at the June/July 1999 issue of In-Fisherman).

1) There are suspended walleyes in most every lake I've ever been on. About 50% (or better) of these lakes definitely contain fishable populations of open-water walleyes.

2) In 90% percent of these cases, these suspended fish run much larger in size than your typical structure-related walleye. In the lake I've been fishing this season, the average walleye on structure runs about 17-18-inches. The suspended fish we've taken have averaged 24 to 26-inches. The largest so far went 28".

3) Best to fish this pattern during the week. On weekends, boat traffic stirs and rips up a lot of weeds and debris. This makes trolling 300+ feet of line exceedingly difficult-- you always seem to catch these bits of flotsam on your line, rendering your lure ineffective. You're always having to reel in and clear your lure. Two solutions are to either run a small split shot several feet ahead of the lure to defract the debris, or run a side planer, which is a good idea in any case. Most importantly, though, excessive boat traffic appears to drive these near-surface ciscoes deep, where walleyes and trophy pike are less likely to use them as a food source.

4) Don't be afraid to use big lures. The other night, we had our best success with big Cisco Kids-- normally thought of as a pike & musky lure. Another great lure is the old Mag Rapala, the one with the metal lip. Finally, the new Normark Tail Dancer has been a producer.

5) You'll be much more likely to trigger strikes with changes in boat speed, as well as directional shifts and turns. I believe these openwater fish often follow lures for perhaps minutes at a time. They often won't strike until the lure changes in speed or direction. Can't tell you how many times I've seen this happen.