Bank Fishing Walleyes

[rangerman]

Defnintely a cool post...Very informative.

[Martin]

I too am very impressed with that post.....Nicely done sir bfishn ...!

[exiledguide]

bfshn thanks for the info The 15lb walleye and the 50lb stripers in lake Catherine are partly the result of AGFC stocking 10" Rainbows They dropped the limit from 5 to 4 fishand stocked 12" to see if that would stop the trout being eaten. I don't know if it helped but it sure made the trout fishing more fun. I was just amazed to find a 10' rainbow in a not that big of a walleyes stomach after it was caught.There also were a lot of the larger sizedRed Fins in the rainbow color sold around Hot Springs.

[bfishn]

You're welcome.

True that. I had a regular stream of live trout customers drive up from the Hot Springs area, loading their shad tanks with 8-10 inchers. It wasn't a year round business, but peaked about the same time the AGFC announced trout releases from their net pens in Quachita. Hmmmm.... I occasionally heard "striper candy" and "magic bait" muttered between driver and passenger. When I queried one fellow about walleye, he noted that 'they knew when they had drifted beyond the edges of a striper school when they picked up a walleye'.

I imagine the only effect the switch to 12 inchers had on the stripers, walleye, and cats was those under ~10 lbs were stuck eating shad. (The difference in form factor and bulk between 10 & 12" is pretty big).

Even though I had plenty of opportunity, I never experimented personally with my trout on game fish in public waters... it was my livliehood at stake after all. I have had some luck with trout pattern sticks on TR walleye though.

Added

I also had some fellows from Gore, OK. that liked to use trout for walleye and stripers in the Tenkiller tailwater. Not only was that legal there, you could even catch (your limit of) trout on rod-n-reel, then move a bit downstream and use your catch for bait. Very unpretentious folks over there. Think about it... if you take 1 tailwater striper or walleye with 1 trout, you just saved all the trout that fish would have eaten in the future for someone else to catch...

[Bill Babler]

I used to have some photo's and cannot find them since I switched computers, but one year Buster and I caught I'm gona say at least a 1/2 dozen Big Walleye up at the pot hole with trout in they gullets and a couple even sticking out their mouth.

Here is a question, How in the frig can they be so picky and so hard to catch and then you catch a 6 pounder with a 1 pound trout sticking out of its mouth and it still tries to eat a stickbait.

You could take everything I know about these fish and maybe half fill a thimble.

[Feathers and Fins]

Bill, I caught many stripers and LMB in Cali right after trout stockings that had numerous trout in the belly and half way down the throat, all i can think is instinct to feed overoad all else. I had a Striper 28pnds that had 6 stocker trout 13'' and one 3lb in its belly and it still atre a 16'' long swim bait. I had one Kentucky that was gill hooked Sunday to the point it would die and when i cleaned it the thing had tons of craws in it yet had to have just one more meal.

[Kayser]

I'm kind of curious how fast fish can digest meals in the lower water temps- just to see how long it takes them to empty their bulging bellies.

[powerdive]

I sometimes think that those of us who'd really like to catch a "lifetime" walleye need to drastically upsize our baits. I wish I knew how and where the real monsters live, and what they feed on. A Walleye In-Sider article some years back featured Darrell Binkley, the Norfork guide, who spoons up big walleyes from 50-90 feet, below the thermocline, in summer. And Gary Parsons told me he believes that the biggest eyes in Bull Shoals and Table Rock live way deep all year--deeper than anyone fishes. Johnnie Candle said they probably don't eat anything we use for bait, and they sure didn't grow that big by doing what all the rest do; a 20-lb. walleye has almost nothing in common with a 4-pounder. In fact, the 4-pounder had better watch out.

I'm guessing the real monster walleyes dine sometimes on carp and extra-large gizzard shad—but most of the time on trout and walleyes.

[Wayne SW/MO]

What very little I know about eyes is that the tend to associate with the bottom and if that is true I would think carp, in shallower water, during the night would seem most likely.

Wouldn't they have problems with H2O below the thermocline?

I would think another possibility might be that they hide under predators who are under shad. I know that cats sometimes turn up under bass who are targeting shad. This is all speculation of course.

[powerdive]

Wayne, appreciate your thoughts. I doubt oxygen is a problem very often under the thermocline in these lakes, because there are no weeds dying, decaying and exhausting the O2. The Walleye Anglers Group in Mtn Home posts the monthly oxygen readings for Bull Shoals, and while it's clear that there can be some depletion at times, it doesn't extend throughout the hypolimnion, so in theory the deeper fish can easily avoid the thinner water.

There are trout and possibly stripers living in the lower story of both Bull Shoals and TR, all year. And of course, you have the paddlefish living down deep in TR. My home lake, Geneva in WI, had lakers, browns, rainbows and ciscoes living below the thermocline, and summertime trollers would often catch smallmouths and northerns mixed in, off downriggers set at 80 feet. It's not that fish can't live down there, in some cases they can--it's just that the warmer water species generally don't perform well in the open water. Obviously, though, some individuals can.