Where The Walleye Are

[ozarkstripers.com]

Any of you fellow walleye anglers want to swap info regarding walleye fishing and locations this year as they begin to migrate? I will start it off by saying where they are not.........In the last week i have hit Tecumseh once and The Pothole twice....Have caught a couple keepers but nothing big yet. I had one bight at tecumseh fished for six hours from the bridge to dawt.. Fished the pothole and had two hits the first night,one was 19 inches. Fished last night from 6 to midnight and caught 1 21 inch and lost another. Two guys with me couldn't keep the trout off their baits but did not catch a walleye. Went down to swanny and saw a few eyes but did not have any luck. If anyone is interested keep this thread alive and well and lets help each other find them........... heres a photo from last night

[Al Agnew]

Haven't done much walleye fishing the last few years, and have never fished where you are. I used to fish lower Black River a lot. Black and Current River walleye were a little...different. Throughout the winter the walleye in Black River would concentrate in the biggest, deepest pools, and the best pools were huge holes where gravel had been dug from the river channel, both deepening and widening the channel. Some places those pools were 40-50 feet deep. The walleye, when inactive, would be lying in deep water off points. When they decided to get active (usually sometime in the last couple hours before dark and early in the morning) they'd move up onto those points in 15 feet or less water. The best points had current either sweeping across them or better yet coming straight onto them.

At night the walleye would often move up to the riffle at the head of the hole as shallow as two or three feet.

They would start moving to spawning territory around the third week of February. By March 1 you basically couldn't find them in the wintering pools any more.

In natural pools on Current River, they would continually cruise from head to tail of the pool when active during the day, staying in a pathway along the zone where the rocks on the bluff side of the pool met the gravel on the other side, usually the deepest part of the pool, and do most of their feeding near the head or tail of the pool.

We fished for them with big live minnows. Biggest I ever caught was 12.5 pounds, but I saw people catch several between 15 and 17.5 pounds.

There are a lot more people fishing for them on Black and Current now, and those people know a lot more about catching them than the average angler 30 years ago. According to guys I know who still fish for them, the numbers of walleye seem to be as good as ever, but size seems to have gone down, probably because the bigger fish are being cropped off before reaching that magic ten pound plus size. Far too many people like to eat walleye. I used to think it was very possible that a new state or even world record could come from Current or Black River, but now it'll never happen unless most anglers start catch and releasing.

[BrianS]

You fished at Tecumseh? When I went over the bridge a day or 2 ago it didnt look like there was enough water there to swim a hog sucker. We need a good rain!

[ozarkstripers.com]

You got that right....ended up at udhall and still could not find much water. Saw some eyes in there looking back at my light but couldnt get a hit. Definetely with ya on the rain.