Walley Spawn.

[Cody Smith]

52 degrees seems to be the Magic number down here on Greers, amount of daylight and several other factors do play a role.

[Al Agnew]

The native river walleye start moving to spawning areas in mid to late February. They are usually done spawning by late March. Not all walleye in all Ozark waters follow this calendar, however...some start moving a little bit later.

[Randall]

Does anyone know anything about Smithville Lake or the Truman tailrace? I pulled a 23" out of the tailrace last spring, but that was while hybrid fishing. As far as actually fishing for them, I don't even know where to start.

[shaker]

Don't know anything about Smithville but there are walleyes below Truman now! They hve been there for a while, best fishing is when the Corps is running water, cloudy, windy, raining days or night. They were being caught on Rogues slow rolled don't know if that pattern is still holding up, swimtail plastics on a jig slow rolled across the bottom is a favorite, charteuse is the best color. Jig and minnow works too. Take lots of cheap jigs and plastics as that is a mean rocky nasty bottom! Got to be careful or you just might hook up with a big hybred, or ole catfish, crappie, white bass. lots of gar and spoonbill are fun too! Take extra line too, try it, it's an experience! Hope this helps and good luck!

[Randall]

Fantastic, thank you. I know about losing lures on those rocks. I bet I've got $20 at least from the last several years of lead down there. After I caught that walleye last spring I've had a little bit of a fetish for them. As for spoonbill, after the 40# + fish we caught last year, I'd be perfectly happy never hooking one of those again unless I was trying. It must've took us a half hour each to bring those in when we managed to double up. I brought mine to hand on 8# and my buddy on 12# braid.

Here's the pic of the walleye I caught, about to release it into my buddy's dad's lake, and the big hybrid I caught a few hours later when the sun was just starting to rise... both while my buddy was being a little girl sleeping in the truck.

See that red spot on the walleye's head, yeah, it tore my hand to shreds when I was trying to get a pic.

[Randall]

Forgot the spoonie... After I released mine, my buddy brought this guy to hand

[shaker]

20 dollars? You must not have fished there much! I bet that it would scare you to know how much equipment has been lost down there. I know that I have lost a ton of it myself and I pour my own jigs. What did that hybrid weight, it looks like a good'un, you want to watch out handling the spoonies too much, I saw a guy get a ticket for having it out of the water. The agents watch that area pretty close and are reall sneaky!

[Martin]

Nice fish Randall !!

As for the original question, a few years ago, Powerdive and I got to spend an evening netting walleyes in a MDC shocking boat on upper Bull Shoals. Most of the night was spent between River Run ramp and Powersite Dam. It was March 11th, and there were a few HUNDRED walleyes shocked, measured and tagged. So, if that was a normal year, the walleyes are up there pretty thick by March 11th. Back in Kansas, everybody used to start fishing the dam's on March 14th. I now think we started too late and could have done better had we started earlier.

I say, start TODAY !