After the spawn occurs, however, Gofron adjusts his presentation and speed to put walleyes in the boat. Take, for instance, the way that he often targets Lake Erie walleyes at such times: "They'll be recouping over the mud in depths of 30 to 35 feet. Until the fish become more active, I'll be trolling live bait or jigging. The jigs will be right on the bottom after I see the fish on the graph. I'll get over them and actually catch them. If I'm trolling spinners, that will be more in the upper portion of the water column. With the spinners, I'm covering more of an area to locate active fish."

Of course, active fish are going to be around baitfish, so that will heavily influence Gofron's daily walleye search. "I'll make sure that there is baitfish there with them," he said. "Sometime during the day, those fish are going to turn on. I'll move around and look for an active part of the school within a mile or two. I'll make a note of what time of the day those fish are biting and are more active.

"In the early morning, if I catch a fish, it's likely to be a bonus fish and it will likely be in some of the shallower, warmer waters. Later in the day, I'll move out a little deeper and that's typically where the more active fish will be."

How does Gofron find such a combination of baitfish and active walleyes? With good electronics -- that's how! He'll watch his graph closely, looking not only for the fish's general location but also for their orientation while feeding to schools of baitfish. "I'll try to run my baits a foot or two above the schools of baitfish," he explained. "Typically, a fish will feed up. And they'll tend to be more aggressive when they look up and see something come by."

What type of baits will he rely on?

"The types of cranks that I'll be using will be (deep-diving Rapala Husky Jerks)," Gofron once told me. "I'll also use a 5, a 7, or a 9 Tail-Dancer. I'll try all three sizes. Those are the baits that I will probably be starting off with. I'll be fishing over 32 feet of water with the baits actually moving through depths of 8 to 24 feet. I'll be covering the whole water column until I actually get a pattern going."

Keep in mind that when the water's dingy, Gofron may feel it necessary to switch from crankbaits to live bait. "They don't see the baits as well, but the live bait is going to offer more attraction to them when water clarity is an issue," he noted.

A final consideration for early-season walleye anglers: Simply use a little brainpower to figure out where the fish are and what they are doing on any given day. "The weather, the mood of the fish, the water temperature -- all of those will play a factor," Gofron said. The problem, of course, is that after a long winter spent oiling reels and watching snowflakes fall, anglers may need a little while to shake off the off-season mental rust.

PWT veteran Darryl Christensen told me a few seasons back that such mental sharpness is almost always what separates the best walleye anglers from the rest of the pack. A keenly honed mental edge is, like a valued tool that you keep tucked away in your tackle box, something that you'll always need, especially early in the year.

"The mental challenge is what I enjoy -- making good decisions," Christensen said. "Heck, anybody can catch fish (and be successful at times) -- there are 56 million people that fish. But it comes down to the mental game on this level."

And whether you're an aspiring walleye angling pro or simply a weekend warrior chomping at the bit to get on the water, that's good advice to heed as you safely hit the water this spring looking for that first limit of 2007 walleyes.