October is often touted as the month to cash in on a great fall walleye bite.  It's perhaps also the best time of the year to catch a trophy walleye.  Well, this may be rule in tradi­tional walleye states, but the species range has expanded beyond its original boundaries, primarily through stocking to southern, east­ern and western states.  For those of us living near such non—tradi­tional walleye waters, October may be more of a trick than a treat.

Here's why.

   Air and water temperatures in the northern latitudes of the Mid­-west typically drop rather quickly in fall.  The forage base in the Mid­west and northern waters has usu­ally dwindled by this time and walleyes start to “feed up” for win­ter.  This combination of ideal water temperatures rel­atively stable weather and a diminishing forage base makes for great fishing in traditional walleye country

   That' s the treat. The trick is. these conditions do not necessarily hold true for other regions of the country, because both weather and forage base can vary so significantly ---so much so, that the month of October can in fact trigger some tough fishing.

   My experiences chiefly come from the southern Great Plains, but I believe this logic applies in many non-traditional walleye waters with a unique forage base and different weather patterns than those of the Midwest,

   In the southern Great Plains, for example, fall fishing is dras­tically different for a number of reasons.  For starters, summer seems to linger on forever.  We can still have several 80° F days in October with very mild nights, and this equates to water temperatures that are often still in the mid-6O°s F.  Water temperatures never seem to drop into those magical 50° F until Thanksgiv­ing, and then the season often turns immediately to winter, with water temperature plunging into the 30°s.  In essence, we don’t have a true fall, it’s more like a protracted late summer imme­diately followed by sudden win­ter.  Granted, there’s a small window of opportunity from Thanksgiving to about the first week in December, when in some years we have fall-like condi­tions and a few fish can be caught. But by then the weather is unsta­ble, and finding a good day to venture out is sometimes tricky.

   Second, most of our reser­voirs have a large forage base of gizzard shad. The problem is not that walleyes aren’t feeding, it’s that they’re doing nothing but feeding.  I’d long suspected one of the reasons fall fishing was so tough was that walleyes had a buffet of shad in front of them most of time.  Tempting them to eat anything other than the filet mignon of baitfish (shad) would be a challenge.

   Lund Pro-staffer and friend Rich Farmer and I were discussing the difficulty of fall fishing, and I told him my buffet theory.  He agreed, but added another dimension based on his experience while fishing one of his favorite flatland reservoirs.

   Farmer was fishing on a typical hot early fall day, when he noticed huge schools of shad concentrated in a small cove. He soon marked larger fish below the shad on his graph. Now admit­tedly, in fertile Kansas waters those fish could be any kind of predator, but he hoped they were walleyes. After trying everything in his tackle box to no avail, he grabbed his cast net (we also fish hybrid stripers down here—thus his cast net) and with this he caught a few shad, baited one up, tossed it in the water, and imme­diately nailed a walleye.

   He and his partner then frantically caught walleyes on every shad they had. When the shad ran out, they rummaged in their tackle box again for lures even vaguely shad-like, but could not get a taker on anything they tried. So, out came the cast net again; they scooped up a few more scraggly shad, and bingo: the walleyes bit again.

   This may not be ground breaking information. We know walleyes can be fussy at times—just part of the fun in figuring out how to catch them. My point is, even when well fed, they’ll still eat if the right treat is dropped in front of them. So to my first theory, I add another: that walleyes in the southern Great Plains during this time of year are so tuned in to feeding on shad because they’ve developed a ‘search image’, rendering them blind to anything else.

   Imagine you’re at a buffet. You start out with an assortment of foods on your plate, but by the second trip you just dish up the few things you liked best. Depending on how big a boy (or girl) you are and how small the plates, you might return to the trough a few more times, but you’re pretty full-it’s no longer about being hungry. There’s just one item you couldn’t get enough of (besides, you have to get your   money’s worth). You have now developed a ‘search image’.  Back you go to the trough. You don’t even look at the other foods. You go straight for your mental pic­ture, just like a walleye going for shad.

 

RESEARCH

   Mike Quist, another friend of mine, got his masters degree in fishery biology from Kansas State University studying the food habits of walleyes in the southern Great Plains, working with Dr. Chris Guy at the Kansas Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit. Their as-yet unpublished research confirmed my theories about the food habits of southern Great Plains walleyes.

   They sampled walleyes throughout the seasons using gill nets and examined stomach contents. They wanted to find out how the stomach contents of this species relate to the thermal regime or water temperature, and also how the thermal regime affects growth rates. During March, April and May, walleye stomach contents, they found, consisted of midges and other invertebrates, along with gizzard shad—the shad making up 75% of their diet. During June, July and August, however, theft walleyes’ diet con­sisted of a large proportion of invertebrates, freshwater drum and white bass, with gizzard shad only 40% of their diet. Mike also noted that walleyes were very difficult to catch in summer, per­haps because located in a different habitat, such as deeper water.  And summer, they found, also had the highest proportion of empty stomachs. By fall, gizzard shad were again an astounding 96% of the walleye diet.

 

   Why the strong preference for shad in the fall? It might be the result of the overall thermal regime throughout the year. Many studies have shown that walleyes reduce their activity and seek cooler water, when surface temperatures exceed 72°F. But juve­nile gizzard shad mostly feed on zooplankton and invertebrates near the surface, preferring the warmest water available during summer. You see the problem?

   Other studies have shown that high surface temperatures such as we have in Kansas effectively separate walleyes and gizzard shad during the summer months. This explains why most walleye stomachs sampled in summer revealed very little shad, and why many fish had empty stomachs. Our southern walleyes, unlike their northern cousins, may be relatively inactive during this time of year, stressed by high water temperatures or lack of favorite food. Mike’s research indicated that, because of these high surface temperatures, southern ‘eyes are barely able to main­tain weight: in some cases, they actually lost weight during the hottest part of the summer. So, here’s why I’ve been catching skinny walleyes during summer in a reservoir full of shad.

   Sounds pretty dismal, but wait—there’s an upside to our high water temperatures. It goes like this. Moderate fall temperatures and mild winters produce ideal water temperatures for shad and walleyes’ thermal regimes to overlap. As a result, growth rates in every season except summer are enhanced up to 150%.  Mike found that some 80% of our southern walleyes’ annual growth in length and weight is put on from the end of summer to the end of October.  So, even though walleyes to the north are packing on the weight in July while southern walleyes are stressed out and going hungry, ours grow faster and pack on even more weight, thanks to our milder fall and winter temperatures.  But catching them in the fall is another thing.

 

FALL TECHNIQUES

   How to land these southern “Atkins diet” walleyes?  While I don’t have solid research to back up my own theories, I do have more than a few years of giving it a hard try.  I figure walleyes will eat even if they have a belly full of shad, but they need to be provoked into it.  Also, you may need to provoke a bunch of them before you find a taker. I equate this challenge to coaxing a female walleye to bite during the spawn.  Anyone who has ever tried fish­ing for spawning fish knows that catching a female walleye at this time is pretty tough.

   In my opinion, the best approach is a crankbalt.  For starters, you need to provoke those strikes, and a crankbaitis ideally suited to do it.  Also, it’s a numbers game: you have to agitate several fish to get one to bite.  Trolling a crankbait becomes the best option for locating an active walleye, because it covers water so efficiently.

   I like to troll and look for fish at the same time.  If I troll over a spot that has all the right looks and hooks (baitfish and larger fish on my sonar screen) but get no takers, I change crankbaits and try again.  I may work a good-looking spot for sev­eral hours, trying different crankbaits until I find the right one. When I do catch a fish, I continue to work over that spot.  If I can’t get anything to go on a crankbait but still feel it’s a good spot, I switch to a jigging spoon or bladebait and work the exact same spot, which sometimes triggers a fish.

   One thing that’s different about trolling crankbaits in fall compared to other times of the year is color. While most of our reser­voirs are fairly murky, and firetiger col­ors usually work best, I’ve found that natural colors out-produce fluorescent ones dur­ing fall, no doubt because the walleyes are so keyed-in on shad.  One of my go-to col­ors and crankbaits is purple Eriedescent or purple prism color on a Reef Runner Deep Little Ripper. Their purple backs with silver sides closely resemble shad colors.  While Reef Runners do not resem­ble shad by body shape, I think their action entices the fish to strike.  The same is true for jigging spoons.  At other times of the year, white or chartreuse are best; but in fall, l go with shad imitations such as North­land’s Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon in their sil­ver shiner color, or a silver Reef Runner Cicada. If I can’t get anything to work jig­ging, I then go back to trolling in search of another active fish, and start the entire process over again.

   So, if you live somewhere outside the traditional northern walleye states and you find no fantastic fall walleye bite - due to a large forage base, weather pat­terns, or whatever the case may be - learn to “think outside the tackle box” and determine why walleyes are doing what they’re doing. Consult your local biolo­gists for clues; put together a plan to catch fish—try different things, be patient and persistent, and you will catch fish, even amidst forage aplenty.

 

*Chad Richardson, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, is also a fishing guide, tournament angler, and past winner of the Kansas Walleye Association (team) Championship.