For the Masses Fishing: walleye

For me, one of the most appealing aspects of fishing is the fact that there is really no end to what you can learn, attempt or achieve. There is always a new technique to try or spot to fish. There are species of fish you've never caught or size class accomplishments to pursue.

My list of fishing goals is substantial and every time I think about it, something new seems to be added to it.

I haven't really had a chance to catch my first musky, arctic char or inconnu; fish species at the top of my North American freshwater bucket list. Just recently I boated my first lake trout. Even though it was just pan-sized by laker standards, finally striking the species off my list felt pretty good.

My fishing bucket list also has many size targets for fish I'm familiar with catching. I would love an opportunity to land a northern pike over 20 pounds or a walleye over 10. Hell, how awesome would it be to haul a 2 pound perch out of the water?

Sometimes, my fishing goals are very personal and related directly to things that only I seem to have trouble doing or are specific goals for specific places.

My very first Bow River brown trout. Reached two goals that day!

One such goal was catching a walleye, of any size, on the lake where my wife's family cottage is located. This lake is supposed to have a decent walleye population but I have never been able to catch one.

And believe me, it's not because I didn't try. Over the past 7 years I had tried everything from bottom bouncing spinner and crawler rigs, trolling crank baits, casting swim baits, slow death rolled worms to jigging weed edges and even drop shotting minnow imitators and swimming buck tail jigs in likely looking spots. You name it, I tried it. The only reason I was sure there were actually walleye in the lake was a dead walleye fry I found while swimming one afternoon and a walleye skull a bird had left on a rock near the cottage.

Well guess what. Last week I finally caught not one but two walleye and one was of pretty decent size!

I wish I could say I was out targeting them but my friend and I were drop shotting plastic minnows around a mid-lake weed hump that often gives up big bass. A big group of fish showed up on my fish finder so I dropped the rig down vertically on a prayer and immediately got bit. I readied myself to land a big bass but I damn near jumped out of the boat when I caught a glimpse of a big walleye before it barrelled straight back toward the bottom. A couple minutes later I was giddily holding my first walleye out of our little cottage lake.

My first cottage lake walleye

My second ever cottage lake walleye. Not a trophy but
more memorable than the big bass we were catching!

We managed to catch a bunch of decent bass that afternoon, but I really can't remember much about any of them, my memory blurred by the excitement of achieving one of my longest standing personal fishing goals.

A nice largemouth...that I almost forgot about

A Big Island Lake walleye

Last month, my friends Adam Ellis, Steve Priestly and I went on our first fly-in fishing trip to *Island Lake Lodge on Big Island Lake in Northern Alberta.

Island Lake Lodge is a full service fishing lodge in Alberta's Birch Mountains Wildland Provincial Park. Guests can target trophy walleye and northern pike on Big Island Lake and on neighbouring Gardiner Lake.

A year of anticipation mixed with the lodge’s isolation and my tendency to believe everything I read in fishing magazines meant only one thing; some of the most epic tackle shopping trips ever embarked upon by amateur fishermen.

Organizing new gear

Pre-shopping conversations went kind of like this: “Oh look, people are slaying big pike on these big, 24k gold-plated spoons with the treble hook swapped out for a siwash hook dressed with white curly-tailed musky grub. I better get a couple of those spoons, a box of those hooks and a bag of big grubs and extras of everything ‘cause you know, we can’t just walk to the local tackle shop when we’re in the middle of nowhere…”

Needless to say, we spent nearly as much money on new gear as we did on the trip itself. Still, throughout the whole planning process one lure kept appearing in our research. Every so often during our reading, we would be reminded of the effectiveness of the classic Len Thompson Five of Diamonds spoon. The day before the trip Bob, from Island Lake Lodge, called to see if we could bring up some supplies for the lodge on our flight. He concluded the phone call by saying, “Hope you got your Five of Diamonds ready for the lake!”

The Five of Diamonds

Not unfamiliar with the classic yellow and red spoons, we each bought a few in different sizes to top off our tackle collections. After all, the five dollar spoons were just a drop in the tackle pond when the smoke cleared and the receipts were handed across the counter.

New tackle carefully unwrapped and organized, the much anticipated trip finally arrived. We made the seven hour drive from Calgary to Fort McMurray, stayed a night in a Fort Mac motel and flew to Island Lake Lodge the next morning. As soon as we got off the plane and introduced ourselves to the lodge proprietors and other guests, the conversation predictably turned to fishing. Again, we were reminded of the Five of Diamonds spoon and Bob even went so far as to say that it was "the hottest lure on the lake."

To keep things simple, and inline with our tendency to believe every tip we hear, we all tied on a Five of Diamonds and decided to start by casting the spoons along weedlines and at points for pike. As expected the pike action was fast and furious almost immediately. More surprising to us were the incidental walleye hookups we started getting while casting traditional pike spoons toward traditional pike structure.

Adam's river walleye

This continued all week. Many trips out started and finished with a Five of Diamonds spoon on the end of our lines. Adam even caught a 7 pound walleye casting a Five of Diamonds spoon into the little river we were waiting to travel down to Gardiner Lake. Actually, most of our best fish of the week were caught on Five of Diamonds spoons. Naturally we lost a few of the spoons as well and Steve ended up buying the entire stock of the deadly yellow lures for sale in the main lodge.

Of course, numbers of fish were caught on other lures as well. Trolling plastic swim baits was my favourite walleye presentation of the week and Steve did well with a perch-coloured spoon too. Still, this trip reminded all of us that there is a reason certain lures, that don’t look like anything a fish will ever encounter let alone eat, consistently sell well over the years.

And in case you’re wondering, I did tie on one of those 24k gold plated spoons with a single siwash hook dressed with a white curly-tailed grub…just to say I used it before I tied my Five of Diamonds back on and got back into the fish.