Answer:
In post spawn and early summer, the fish will typically head to where ever the food is. If there are roving schools of bait in open water, they will head there. If there are bug hatches that attract the bait – they will head to those areas. If there are minnow hatches that occur on shallow structure – that is where the walleyes will be.

So the first thing I do is to try to get an idea of what forage is available to the walleyes and then determine where that forage should be. If the walleyes should be in 10 feet or more, I use my electronics to find them – or the pods of bait fish. With a good color unit it is fairly easy to find even bottom hugging walleyes – if they are suspended out over open water it is very easy to spot them. By a “good” unit, I would look for one with 480 or more vertical pixels (for good resolution). The unit should be color to make it easy to figure out what size fish are being displayed (big ones will have more color in the arc). I would also look at some of the newer units with fast Ping and Scroll speeds so you can search more quickly.

If the walleyes are up shallow then fishing is the only way to find them. I try to stay as aggressive as possible to cover water (cranks or quickly pitching jigs) until I get a bite or catch a fish. Then I slow down and work the area over more thoroughly.

Keith Kavajecz