Spooks

Do walleyes inhabit your lake? If so, you are privileged. I mean no disrespect to other game fish. It’s just that walleyes are the essence of Northwoods angling. We have plenty of them here at Birch Lake, near Harshaw, Wisconsin. They run a little small; on a good day you need to sort through several to find a couple that meet the 15-inch legal size limit (and I never keep more than a couple).

I am glad they’re here; at times I even prefer fishing for them instead of the trophy smallmouth bass that also inhabit this 180-acre lake. Why should this be so? Fishermen love a fight, and nothing battles like smallmouths. In the warm-water days of summer, when they feel the bite of a hook, they will leap two or three feet clear of the water. They will pull, race, dive and thrash, battle you to a stalemate for minutes at a time.

Walleyes, on the other hand, come along somewhat peacefully. They’ll tend to hold deep for a while but then grudgingly give in. They’re not a threat to take your jig and tear it clean off your 6-pound-test line. What, then, is the attraction? Well, of course, they’re the best-tasting freshwater fish alive: You toss a 30-cent minnow or leech into the water, you reel in $10.99-a-pound seafood. It’s a pretty nice bargain.

But there’s more to it than that. You surely like walleyes for your own reasons; I have mine. And especially at this time of year, early season, cool to cold water, it’s the finesse it takes to catch them. I set up over a favorite rock bar. I know (or hope) they are down there, but I also know they’re stealthy, those greenish-gold spooks with eyes like precision-ground lenses. A northern pike will strike a bait with the savagery of a wolf. Walleyes, well, I’m not at all sure how they manage to be so light on the take. They seem to lift that bait from the rocks with the touch of a pickpocket, and pick your pocket they will, in a manner of speaking, if you’re not completely attuned.

I slip a minnow onto a jig, cast it out and, a few inches at a time, with an occasional twitch, draw it back across the rocks. Through the sensitive graphite rod I can feel every bump of lead-head on stone and sense the tug of every weed. I wait for a sensation that is just a bit different, a subtle tap-tap, or sometimes just a bit of extra weight that ever so slightly pulls back when lifted. A snap of the wrist then, and I am fast to a fish. The other night the walleyes were biting so light that detecting a strike had as much to do with noting the movement of the line where it met the water as with the vibrations coming through the rod to the cork grip in my hand.

In high summer, they are less subtle, but their bite is still distinctive, even when fishing with a leech on a slip bobbers. A smallmouth will lustily grab the leech and swim off, the bobber suddenly tracking left or right and downward. When a walleye comes calling, the bobber will twitch, pause, and then go down. What happened was that the fish nosed up to the bait, stopped, inhaled it with a jet of water through the gills, paused for just an instant, and moved deliberately on.

Early-season jigging, though, is the way to experience walleyes. It forces me, if I want to take a fish or two home, to be fully in the moment. The wise have said that it is impossible to fish and worry at the same time. True enough in my experience, but where spring walleyes are concerned, it is impossible to catch fish without being nearly in the state of zen.

As for tangible rewards, a meal of fresh-caught walleyes may not qualify as a sacred feast, but it’s close. Here’s wishing you a few of those as you enjoy your lake this year.