"What anglers need to do is take a section of the river and pick out the best features," said Delain. "Is there a point, a current break or a rock ledge or a sandbar, something in that section that holds fish? Start there. After you break down that little section, fish those spots and you'll find walleyes. If you try to fish a big section all at once, it will be too confusing and you'll wonder 'Where do I start?' Start small and break down a section, and if that doesn't work, break down another section. At some point you'll find out what the walleyes are using to stage and feed on. Do this, and when you find walleyes, you know you have accomplished something rather than going to a general spot where everyone is at. Soon you'll gain confidence about going to a river system and catching fish in different areas other than the dams."

"When I'm down from the dam, what I look for is a current break with some available forage," said Johnson. "It might be a wing dam, it might be a riprap shoreline with a little steeper break on it. The rock tends to slow the current. Some of my best spots are where the riprap or wing dams drop off at the edge a foot or two into a slower-tapering bottom out to 7 or 8 feet deep. If this structure is producing a back eddy that pushes the water back upstream along the riprap, it can really concentrate walleyes.

"If I'm not finding walleyes on the shallow structure," continued Johnson, "I tie on a three-way swivel with a heavy weight, 3 to 4 ounces, and pull a crankbait with a shallow-diving lip in the deep holes. The current can be strong here on the surface of the river, but that flow slows down in the hole, and walleyes and saugers will stack up there. This is typically 18 to 25 feet of water. These fish are staging in the holes as they make their way to the dam."

What is interesting is that neither of these two top anglers uses the jig-and-minnow combination as their top lure choice -- a combo often touted as the only way to catch spring walleyes on the river.

"The jig-and-minnow is a good presentation, and it will work in the holes," said Johnson. "But I like to fish fast and find the aggressive fish, so I don't fish a jig-and-minnow much. When you do find me jig-fishing in the spring, I'm almost always casting a jig with a plastic body shallow and looking for the spots where the fish are feeding. The walleyes slide up onto these spots because the baitfish are there."

Delain sets his sights on traditional spawning areas when he works downstream from the dam.

"I like shallow clam beds near side channels or backwater areas because the walleyes use these areas for spawning," he said. "Rock/rubble shorelines are also great, especially those that taper into deeper water. The walleyes like to stage in the deeper water and then move over the tops of the shallower rubble to feed."

Delain's method for spring river walleyes consists of casting and trolling crankbaits.