White River Walleye

[Fish Bork]

For some reason the big rivers never come to mind. Yeah there are some saugers in those rivers.

[RiverRunner]

I've caught them (sauger) in the Eleven Point near the state line when smallmouth fishing. I've also been told by a biologist that most rivers in the ozarks have a breeding population of them, although small compared to walleye. Sauger tend to prefer larger, more turbid rivers than walleye. The same biologist told me that the Black River has the best population of Sauger in this area.

[fshcatcher]

There are saugers in the Mississippi River. I fish the Kaskaskia River and also Carlyle lake often and they are stocked in both of those bodies of water. A sauger can adapt and live in more shallow depths than a walleye, that is why they are in our bodies of water since the avg. depth of the lake is under 20 feet deep. Walleye need deeper water, or that is what the fish biologist told most of us that fish Carlyle Lake. They are a smaller species largest being about 5-6 lb, but they eat just as good as a walleye, probably even better.

Good Day to all

[Al Agnew]

As I wrote in my Ozark walleye post, there WERE walleye in the White River system prior to the building of Bull Shoals Lake, and the book I quoted has reports of them being caught in the James River in the 1920s and 1930s. Apparently, however, they were rare. You would think that giggers would have taken more walleye if they were at all common.

However, they may not have been as rare as we might think. The tactics and lures used for catching bass in the White and other Ozark streams back in those days would not have lended themselves to catching walleye with any regularity. Those of you who fish rivers like the Current, Black, Meramec, and Gasconade could ask yourselves how many walleye YOU'VE caught by accident while fishing for bass. The answer, I'm sure, would be few to none. In all my years of fishing Ozark streams, while fishing for bass I've caught, as near as I can remember, two walleye on the Bourbeuse River, four on the Meramec (two in one day this past autumn), one on Big River (a couple years ago, and Big River is my home stream and I've fished it for nearly 50 years), several juveniles on Saline Creek, a half dozen or so on lower Black River, and that's about it. And yet we know there are breeding populations of them on all these rivers.

And even the giggers, back in the old days, probably didn't do much gigging on the White river system when the walleye were most vulnerable. Ozark river walleye are early spawners, staging near spawning riffles starting about mid-February, and pretty well finished spawning by early March. So you would have had to be gigging at night in late February to really have a good chance of seeing a lot of walleye. Otherwise, you would be gigging when the walleye were widely scattered and likely in water too deep to gig.

The key is that walleye are almost totally nocturnal feeders in the summer when most Ozark float fishing was done, and spend most summer days in deep water. According to one old guy I knew on Current River who spent a lot of time studying them, they hang out in the deepest parts of pools during the daytime in warm weather, right where the rocks coming off the talus slope of the bluff meets the gravel of the other side of the pool, well off the banks toward the middle of the pool. Back in those days, and even today, most floatfishermen fish the banks for bass, and the boats would be right over where the walleye would be. And most bass lures back in those days were meant to be fished shallow, anyway.

So it's no surprise to me that very few walleye were caught by the old time floatfishermen on the White. They were probably never common, but they were there.

As for sauger, I've caught them while walleye fishing on the lower Black River, and also in the Diversion Channel. Compared to walleye, they are not as common on the Black, but there are enough of them that it's no surprise to catch one.