Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

Catching walleyes from May until the arrival of serious summer is pretty straightforward. You just have to fish where walleyes are feeding when Wally and Wanda are in the mood to eat. This will invariably be in the top 6 feet of the water column during periods of low light. Fish are cold-blooded creatures. They are wired to eat the easiest meal available while expending the least amount of energy, and avoiding being eaten by the next predator up the food chain.

The reason the Creator endowed Stizostedium vitreum with those opaque, bulbous eyeballs is to make the survival process of eating easier under low-light conditions when the forage base can be easily silhouetted and ambushed after being herded to a pinch point like a rocky wall or shallower water found along the shore or on top of a reef. This usually occurs on the windblown part of the lake where the food that the walleye forage base is eating is blown to, mainly because of little ability to fight natural factors like wind and current.

Next to the spawning ritual the walleyes just got done dealing with, the strongest life force driving 'eye movement and activity is the predator/prey relationship. Between now and the arrival of serious summer when lakes begin to stratify and there are numerous feeding options in the ecosystem, the walleye's daily feeding drama will likely play out fairly close to where spawning occurred.

In lakes fed by inlets in which walleyes make upstream spawning runs, the first place to look is along the first breakline out from shore. On this part of our planet, most natural lake inlets are on the north side of the lake where the angle of the spring sun warms the water quicker. Seasonal change also tends to bring a prevailing west or southwest wind under stable weather conditions. This creates wave action that pushes the zooplankton that the walleye forage base is feeding on toward the northern shoreline as well.

Current influx from the inlet is also a force to consider. Odds are walleyes aren't the only finny critters that move up into the creek to spawn. Walleye food makes the upstream trip as well, which is one more reason for Wally and Wanda to cruise fairly close from where the feeder stream's influence mixes quietly with the lake.

This walleye pattern hasn't changed a bit in natural lakes since God created walleyes. But the ministrations of mankind over the past century or so have created flowages and countless manmade lakes and reservoirs where native walleye populations have been augmented by stocking of hatchery-reared fry and fingerlings. The primordial walleye wiring is still in place in stocked fish. These 'eyes will try to seek out rocky-rubble bottom areas, ideally close to some kind of current to at least go through the motions of spawning when water temperatures warm to about 45 to 48 degrees. The closest thing they may be able to find that approximates this kind of habitat could be riprap along a manmade dam, or the transition zone beyond where the sand ends out from an artificial sandy beach.