For years we have been instructed to head to the river for great spring walleye fishing. We've been told to take a lot of jigs and minnows, and motor right up to the downstream side of a dam where walleyes will stack up like cordwood.

Obviously, many anglers have heeded this advice because in the spring, venturing into a channel below a dam will put you right in the middle of a flotilla of boats often described as mayhem. But according to two veteran river rats with solid credentials on the walleye tournament trail, anglers are missing the boat on a lot of productive water.

Steve Delain is a tournament professional who cut his teeth fishing rivers while competing on the Masters Walleye Circuit (MWC). In 1999, he and his partner took top honors at the Illinois River Event, and in 2001 they were crowned MWC Team of the Year. He now competes on the FLW Walleye Tour.

Nick Johnson is a full-time angling pro who also competes on the FLW Walleye Tour. In 2004, he was crowned that tour's champion, and in 2005 he won the coveted Angler of the Year title.

Both of these anglers spend tremendous amounts of time on the rivers in the spring, and both agree that the dams are the last place they would be found fishing for walleyes.

"Everyone tends to head up to the dams on rivers during the spring period," said Johnson. "I try to avoid that because of the crowds. I find that whenever I move away from the dam, sometimes even six to 10 miles downstream, I'll run into those bigger pre-spawn walleyes that haven't moved up yet and are staging. You have to realize that not all the walleyes are spawning at the dam. Some are heading to the tributaries or they spawn on a riprap or rock structure on the edge of the main channel."

"It's a misconception that all the walleyes in a river system go up to the dam and spawn all at once," added Delain. "Walleyes will use sand flats, rock and rubble flats, clam beds, deep transition shorelines, boat harbors with groundwater springs --just a lot of different habitat that walleyes will use. It's a small percentage that go up to the dam to spawn. Walleyes will use whatever habitat they are imprinted to spawn on and then they leave. They come in waves, with some using downriver spots like a flat or a tributary or side-channel area. So these fish are using different habitats in the system that can be several miles apart."

The problem is that anglers are also imprinted with the notion that to catch fish in the spring, they need to fish the dam. They don't have a clue where to look, outside of this obvious spot.