Following the Crowd

A new lake and where do we go to find the walleyes?  The guy at the bait shop said to look for a crowd of boats and told us what to use.  Do I follow the crowd all bunched up on the point or go searching on my own?  It’s basic instinct for most of us to go to the crowd after all they must be catching walleyes or they would not be all bunched up there.  What happens after we get there is the difference between watching everybody else catching a few fish or we can dare to be different from the rest and catch a lot of fish.  With the popularity of walleye fishing today we are not going to find too many places to ourselves.  Unpressured walleyes would sure be nice but it’s not going to happen often.  There are a few places where we can find a spot to ourselves but it takes time to do and most everyone doesn't have that kind of time to spend searching new waters for unpressured walleyes.  To consistently catch more fish than the rest of the boats on a point or flat we need to be independent from the rest.  This can be anything from a different bait with a different presentation or the same bait presented differently.  The guy at the bait shop said to pull spinner rigs with crawlers real slow.  Try the same spinner rig but speed it up.  Rip it through the crowd in and out of the boats at two to three times the speed they are going.  Walleyes like most fish get accustomed to seeing the same thing and it will slow them down.  But see what happens when they see it come fast!  Sometimes they just can't resist a bait that’s going fast and the nice thing about going fast is there is no peck peck or just an extra weight to the line.  Speed causes bone jarring strikes and the walleyes will hook themselves almost every time.  Maybe switch from live bait to plastics.  Live bait does catch walleyes almost all the time but switching to plastics can sometimes be the difference between a few fish and a limit of fish.  Another thing I like about plastics, I don't get my hands dirty and I don’t have to worry about keeping them alive.  The Exude baits in the Mister Twister line fit the bill nicely and they have a plastic to imitate anything that swims. 

  Pressured walleyes will sometimes go belly to the bottom.  These fish aren’t necessarily neutral since they are tight to the bottom. It's the pressure that has put them there but we have to have good electronics to find these fish.  The Lowrance Bottomline 5300 does an excellent job of showing us these bottom hugging walleyes.  The walleyes are still here now we need to find what is going to make them bite.  Maybe pulling crankbaits through a crowd of boats can make the difference that the walleyes want.  Pulling crankbaits also plays into the speed factor cause we are generally going faster plus exposing our baits to more fish and putting baits in front of more active fish as well. 

  Always keep in tune to what is happening around at all times.  Maybe a wind has kicked up and it has the walleyes pushed up in the shallows where most of the other boats won’t dare to go.  Take that journey into the shallows and here you’ve found an area by a crowd to yourself.  Be extremely careful not to let the other boats know that you are catching fish in here.  Keep the net extremely low or release the fish in the water at the side of the boat away from the crowd.  If anybody sees the net go up I will guarantee it will not take long before others come in shallow to investigate.  A crowd of boats in shallow water can push walleyes away in a hurry. 

  Try searching out over the deep water at the same depth as you were fishing in the crowd.  Walleyes will sometimes go and suspend away from the pressure in deep water.  Here it is important not to fish below those walleyes.  They are at the same depth as they were on the point only now they are over the deep water and suspended.  Most fisherman make the mistake of fishing deeper only because they depth has increased where they are fishing at.  The electronics can tell us if the fish are there and at what depth.  Now we’ve found fish by a crowd but not in the crowd.  Again be sneaky and you can enjoy a big numbers day when everybody else is only catching a few walleyes.    

   Whatever the answer is to more fish in a crowd it usually has to do with daring to be different than the rest.  Everything I’ve mentioned has made a big difference for me in and around a crowd and with all the pressure on walleyes today being different when we follow a crowd can usually lead to a big day of fishing.

Terry Wilson