Nighttime Is The Right Time For Making...Or Taking, Walleyes!

    Like the old song by Jennifer Warrens says: “ It’s the right time of the night, the stars are winking above, it’s the right time of the night, for making….” On this particular spring night a young mans – or in my case a middle-aged mans – thoughts are not on the kind of love Jennifer sings about. My thoughts as well as those others that will forego the comforts of domesticity are on the love of those piscatorial denizens of the deep: Walleyes! Surely, it must be love that will cause grown men to crawl from their warm beds in the middle of the night, leaving behind wives and lovers. What else but love can make a man drive for hours bleary-eyed, mind racing with anticipation? The kind of love I am talking about is the love of silent spring nights pursuing big walleyes in and around Voyager Park in Depere WI. On these late night trips, gregarious human nature gets a boot in the backside. We band together against the unknown in the darkness, fellow tribesmen!
  For those of you unfamiliar with the walleye scene in Depere, you should know the shore bound angler has every bit as good a chance at a trophy walleye as those anglers who are in boats. Timing is the key. The third shift, late night, that is the time for big walleyes! Take advantage of time, make it work for you, and you will likely put yourself between a walleye named “Hawg” and the trough she is in route too. Of the five, ten-pound plus fish I have caught since 1996 in Depere, four of them were caught between two, and five a.m. This nugget of walleye wisdom is no surprise to most. That being the case, I wonder why I encounter so few anglers out on the waters after midnight? Could it be that they just aren’t willing to pay the cost? Believe me, I know how hard it is to either, get out of bed after only an hour or two of sleep or not to sleep at all. Once you reap the rewards of “working the night shift,” you will find it a “job” you love. Not only will you catch some big walleyes; you will have the best spots all to yourself! Moreover, if that is not enough, there is a lot to be said for the beauty and serenity of spending a moonlit night on or near the water. Here is what a typical spring night in Voyager Park is like.
26
Craig Lacy with a nice 26" walleye
Judging by the smile I'd say
Craig loves the night shift!

    Willing myself out of the warmth and comfort of my bed (with less than two hours of sleep), I drive from Appleton to Depere, a hot thermos of strong coffee dissolving the sleep from my head. The weatherman (Tom Mahoney) on the a.m. radio station says it is forty-two degrees, and a wind advisory is in effect. As I pull into Voyager Park, and park my van in the parking area, I meet two men from Stevens Point. They are putting a small boat in the back of a pickup truck. I say, “hello,” and ask them how they have done?
    As they finish putting gear in the truck, they tell me about fishing the riprap on the south side of the peninsula facing Fort James Paper Company. “ Not a lot of fish tonight…. Last night we saw four legal fish. Tonight the biggest was twenty-five or twenty-six inches.”
    “ Must be pretty hard fishing in this wind?” I ask.
    “ Yeah, its bad, and the waters pretty dirty too.”
    “ You guys fish here much?”
    “ This is the first year, we been hitting it hard though.”
   “ Well guys, I’m going to poke around and see if I can find a spot out of this wind. Drive safe, maybe see you again somewhere down the road.”
    We said our good-byes and I checked my watch (12:35 a.m.) as I slid the side door of the van open. I grabbed my tackle bag, long handled net, and Shimano medium action crankbait rod. Before locking the van, I double-checked my pocket for keys, put on a pair of heavy socks plus rubber boots, and pulled the earflaps on my hat down. The van door slid shut and I look around the parking area. Six other vehicles were parked randomly throughout the lot. Strong winds held the two flags frozen eastward. Damn! I gathered my things and walked up towards the restrooms, where the live bait machine lighted the immediate area. Continuing towards the rip rapped Eastern Shore of the park, I could not help but feel a little discouraged. The wind would all but eliminate any thoughts of trying to fish a jig. Approaching the waters edge, I leaned my jig rod against a large rock and put down the rest of my equipment. Fortunately, my crankbait rod already had a Bomber long A rigged and ready. The Bomber is a plastic bodied stickbait with some heft to it. In this wind a balsa wood Rapala would not cast well at all. With the wind directly in my face, I tried to get some distance with the Bomber. Nothing doing. If the wind had been from any other direction, I could have positioned myself to use the wind in my favor.
    A short time later, I decided to look for a place out of the wind. “May as well try behind the St. James Inn,” I thought. I picked up my stuff and made my way back across the park. Another vehicle left the parking area as I walked past the condominiums next to the St. James Inn. The desk clerk peered out the front doors from behind his high wooden counter as I walked past. Around the corner of the building I could hear the water as it tumbled under the Inn, and came out into the channel, framed by the lock on one side and the condos on the other. As I rounded the red-bricked corner of the Inn, I heard voices down by the water: “Damn, think I missed one.” Two dark silhouettes stood down near the current, casting. I cautiously made my way down the muddy slope towards the rock-strewn shore. I put down my stuff, unhooked the bomber from my six and a half-foot Shimano Sensilite rod and replaced it with a Rattlin Rouge (Clown pattern). As I threw my first casts, I kept an eye on the two anglers up next to the St. James Inn. One threw a big white twister while the other ran a large stickbait across the current.
    Billowy grey clouds race across a full moon framed by a black sky. I check my watch again and wonder if I should have stayed home in bed. I can hear the wind howl around the building. I see leafless bushes shake in the dim yellow light given off by the night-lights that outline the condominiums across the channel. I hear a splash, then a voice: “Oh-eee I got her this time, feels like a good one.” The fish makes a headlong rush down stream, and I can hear the drag squeal followed by laughter. I watch as the darkly clad angler slowly gains the advantage over a real nice walleye. After the fish is netted, the flash of a camera breaks the night.
    “ Hey! Do you have a tape measure?” The angler who caught the walleye asked me.
    “ Umm, yeah I do, I’ll … let me check my bag.” I switched on my miner’s light, kneeled, and groped around among my tackle until I found it. “ Here it is!” I straightened up and walked cautiously over the jagged rock and pieces of broken concrete that make up the shoreline. I introduced myself to the two smiling young men: “ I’m Paul… nice fish, what’d it hit?”
    “ I’m using a Husky Jerk, black silver. “Yeah, it is a beauty. Let’s see how big it is.” He placed the fish on a flat piece of ground. “Oh, my names Brett, and this is Craig.”
    Craig said: ”Hi, how’s it going?“ as he knelt down next to the fish.
    I handed the tape measure to Brett as he crouched down near the walleye. The metal tape stretched out over the fish. In the moving light of our headlamps, the twenty-five inch mark rested on the fishes white spotted tail fin. “ Fat female, loaded with eggs, must be getting close dropping them?” I said.
    “Water was forty-four degrees yesterday.” Brett said as he picked up the fish, walked to the waters edge and gently released it. The fish lolled momentarily on the surface, then slowly disappeared under the mud stained water. “ Needs to be forty-six or seven, then they spawn.”
    Brett gave me back the tape measure as the three of use picked up our gear and began to throw our lures across the current again. “ Thanks.”
    “Uh-huh, where you guys from?” I asked.
    “Appleton.” Craig replied.
    “Fish here much?” I said, as I fired the clown to the other side of the channel.
    “This makes three nights in a row.”
    “Many fish?”
    “Not a lot, but we each have a legal one. A ten and a twelve pounder.”
    As the night wore on the three of us talked about fishing, work, school, what sucked and what did not, and the advantages of late night walleye fishing. Craig and Brett both caught a couple more decent walleyes, but not the twenty-eight inch or larger, legal fish. I still had not caught a fish, although my Rouge had run over the backs of more than one of them. About three-thirty, Brett said it was time to leave. Both Brett and Craig had to be up by eight a.m. Brett for work, Craig for classes at the University of Wisconsin in Oshkosh. “ You guys take care, maybe I’ll see you again one of these nights?”
    “ Not tomorrow night, but maybe Friday night.” Craig said as he opened the door of the Ford Explorer he drove. Brett slid in the passenger side, rolled down the window and said:” See ya, good luck.”
    “ Drive safe guys.” I said as the Explorer backed in a half circle, straightened out, then started forward over the gravel, pock marked alley which ran beside the Inn. Seconds later I stood alone in the dark.
    I turned back to the water, moved gingerly towards the Inn, and took a position near where the current emerged from under the porch of the St. James. I would now be able to run the Rouge along the current edge. It goes without saying that the edges of currents are well frequented at all times by marauding fish on the feed.
    After fifteen or twenty minutes of casting, the rod doubled over, and I new I had a good fish on. The fish held down deep in the heaviest part of the current; I felt the head shake from side too side. I thought I might have fouled hooked the fish, but once I felt the head shake I new it had bit. I kept pressure on the fish while trying to gain line; The fish bulldozed into the bottom, then swung in towards the shore. As the fish moved out of the heavy current I picked up some line and continued to apply pressure. Now the fish came up the side of the current until I could see it in the shallow water directly in front of me. Dim light reflected in the walleyes large milky eye; looked like this fish may be a legal one. Not beaten yet, he – or more likely she – turned back into the current; this run did not have the power of our initial confrontation, and lasted only about ninety seconds. As I gained line again, I began to look around the shore near me. “ I know the net is right here somewhere.” I thought. A few feet away to the right, resting partially on a rock, lay the long handled deep bag net. While moving the few feet that separated me from it, I reeled the fish closer. Stepping over the net, I bent down, grabbed it in my left hand while sweeping the rod forward in my right. This kept pressure on the fish and forced it into a position near the rocky shore, just a few feet to my right. I lowered the net into the water behind the fish, eased off on the rod pressure, and let the current, back the fish into the net.
    After measuring and taking a few photos, I gently tail released the biggest walleye I would catch this season in Depere. She measured twenty-nine inches – with a belly that full, the fish had to be a she! One other walleye came to net, on this windy, dim lit night up near the St. James Inn. I continued to fish until the first grey light of dawn; then other Fishermen began to appear like apparitions throughout the park. Taking their arrival as my cue, I packed my gear into the van and drove the short distance back to Appleton.
    Later in the day, after seven hours of sleep, I drove to the local “Toy” store on the west side of town. A few new stickbaits and maybe some four inch tubes too try in Depere would round out my list. While I browsed, I met and had the oppourtunity too speak with Gander Mountain spokesman Ken Kopiske. Ken is the former fishing department manager, and a excellent walleye fisherman. He had some interesting things too say about stickbaits and walleye fishing.
    Which do you think would be the biggest selling stickbait: Bomber, Rapala, Storm, or Smithwick? Well according to Ken, the biggest seller at the Appleton store is the Rapala Husky Jerk. The one picked most often by anglers who hunt the trophys in Depere is: a number HJ-12, in a firetiger or black silver pattern. Other top picks by anglers include: Shad Raps, ssr #8 in black silver or gold shad. Smithwick Rattlin Rouges in the 5 inch model.The clown and white pearl pattern work best. Ken’s personal favorite is a #13 floating Rapala, in the black and silver pattern. Ken explains his choice in comparison with the more popular Husky Jerk this way: “ The most effective big walleye crankbait is a minnow imitator that is bouyant enough too “Back Out” of rocks and continue a steady, or stop-and-go retreive. It must also maintain a consistant action(wobble) in current.”
    As we continued our conversation, Ken touched on color selection, ethical considerations, and practical matters like the importance of sharp hooks and being sure to remember the camera. We agreed that the single most important piece of the trophy puzzle in Depere is timing! There are two aspects of timing, which need to coincide: The time of year and the time of day. The last week in March through the third week of April is the time of year. From two a.m. until five a.m. is the most productive time within the twenty-four hour cycle. This April, fall in love with your new job. When the big eyes are out, you’ll be working the night shift. Listen. “ It’s the right time of the night, the stars are winking above, it’s the right time of the night, for making… Walleyes!”
  

        Some additional advice from Ken


    "Especially after dark, crankbaits with rattles can increase your odds! But even a perfect rattling, swimming, minnow-imitator is of little use if the hooks are dull.Color is always controversial. Confidence in what you are throwing is much more important.Some of us fish to catch a few, some to fill a freezer,others like to impress friends and neighbors, while a few of us look to catch a giant fish! It's a different game seeking fewer but larger fish. Set your goal and pursue it. There is nothing that can compare to a successful fishing or hunting trip that yields a true "pig". Just remember to release what's not going to hang on your wall or in a glass case.Big fish are unique and so are the people who seek them."
29
A late night 29" Walleye
This one hit a Clown pattern
Rattlin Rouge!

  


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