Although my guiding business pays the bills, I still love getting my string stretched just for fun. There are a bunch of places close to home where I can park the truck and walk down to a drain tube or bridge on a warm May evening or cool pre-dawn morning with a spinning rod and a small shallow-running crankbait, and catch a couple of walleyes with little company from other anglers.

As noted at the beginning of this article, catching walleyes now is fairly straightforward: Put something in front of 'em where walleyes are feeding when they want to eat -- essentially targeting the top 6 feet of the water column during periods of low light.

Here is where 35 years of marriage has made me a better fishing guide. Experience from the longevity of this holy union has taught me that my wife is always right, or at least it's easier to attempt fulfilling her heart's desire than to tell her the request is somewhere between obtuse and ridiculous. Most clients -- or my wife -- don't want to join me or reward a short walk from the truck to catch walleyes on a No. 5 Shad Rap by a drain tube at 4 a.m. They want a boat ride, perhaps the opportunity to work on a tan and still catch walleyes. The fact that walleyes will be about as eager to feed as it is easy to build a laundry chute running from a bedroom on the top floor at one end of a tri-level house to the opposite end of the basement is my problem. Fortunately, catching walleyes during "banker's hours" is easier than requests for extreme engineering dictated by a spouse.

The predator/prey relationship is still the major key to consistent success. Walleyes may not be up there cruising among the baitfish in 5 feet of water at midday, but they won't be far away. You still want to target water less than 12 feet deep. In ultraclear water, maybe go as deep as 20 feet. When not actively feeding during stable weather conditions, walleyes in lakes tend to slide just a little deeper, usually just down from the transition breakline. The breakline is where you'll find them when it is time to eat, either vertically along a steeply breaking shoreline or several hundred yards away on a slowly sloping flat.

A minnow, half-crawler or leech presented on a 1/16- to 1/32-ounce slow-falling jig can be deadly. Controlled drifts using slightly heavier jigs fished just off the bottom along that 10- to 12-foot contour -- or the first deep-water breakline -- will produce, too. Trolling or casting this contour with small crankbaits can also be effective, especially when you vary the speed these lures track through the water.

Try some shallow thinking for walleyes this spring. You'll quickly figure out why 'eyes have been missing your boat all these years.