The Best Strategies to Boat Monster Walleyes

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As soon as the boat was in position and moving at the right pace, Austin Moser cast as far as he could at a 45-degree angle. My cast fell 15 feet upstream from his.

“Let it sink to the bottom. Once it hits, lift up,” Moser instructed. “Keep your rod tip up so I can see the line and keep pumping the rod up and down ... just like when we back-bounce for salmon.”

I knew exactly what he meant. Soon, Moser latched into a walleye. “It’s a small one; you keep fishing.”

Seconds later I was locked in battle with a fish that didn’t feel like any walleye I’d ever caught. At first, I thought it was one of the big triploid trout Moser is known for getting on. Once the tug grew consistent, however, I knew it was a good walleye.

Moser released his 4-pound fish and scooped up mine with the net. “Let’s weigh it and measure it and get it back in the water,” he urged.

It tipped the scales to 9 1/2 pounds—the biggest walleye I’d ever caught. We were off to a fine start on this beautiful spring morning.

THE TECHNIQUE

Moser and I have been fishing together for more than a decade. We’ve chased salmon in multiple states, including Alaska. We’ve gone after big trout, burbot and walleyes. Moser knows I’m not fond of trolling for ’eyes, so when he told me we’d be targeting big ones using salmon techniques, I bit.

Moser is a full-time fishing guide (austinsnorthwestadventures.com) and one of the hardest working men I’ve met. He’s fun to fish with and never stops learning, constantly thinking of new ways to catch more fish and become better at what he loves.

“How we’re going to fish today is actually a combination of back-bouncing, side-drifting and twitching, with a bit of swinging,” Moser said as I released the biggest walleye of my life. All are familiar methods I’ve used for decades to catch salmon and steelhead, but I’d never heard of these approaches being applied to catch big walleyes.

Back-bouncing is a controlled way of letting out line behind the boat with the purpose of keeping the presentation on the bottom. The boat moves slower than the current, allowing the terminal gear to travel downstream. The only difference when doing this for walleyes is the terminal gear is cast out to reach the shelf being fished, not dropped beneath the boat as you’d do for salmon.

Side-drifting is where you cast and let the terminal gear move downstream at the same rate as the boat. This is a great way to cover a lot of water and has been a go-to approach among steelhead and trout anglers for years.

The first part of Moser’s walleye drift is like side-drifting. Once the terminal gear hits the bottom, it becomes more like back-bouncing. Where shelves drop off, troughs are encountered or current flow speeds up or slows down, that’s when the twitching and swinging tactics come in. The angler is responsible for doing what’s necessary to keep the terminal gear on the bottom, where the walleyes are.

This multi-faceted approach is not a passive one. If you’re not paying attention to what your line is doing, feeling the terminal gear and constantly gauging the boat and water speed, you’ll miss the mark. It’s far different from how many anglers envision fishing for walleyes.

FINDING THE FIT

We were fishing Washington’s Rufus Woods Reservoir, Moser’s home water on the Upper Columbia River. The reservoir’s level is regulated by dams, and when the flood gates open, a flow is created.

“The water has the best flow early in the morning,” says the guide. “The city of Grand Coulee comes to life then, and this requires power, which the dam generates. Midweek sees the best fishing, with weekends being noticeably slower. The first 4 hours of the day are best, as that’s when the most water is moving and the sun is still low in the sky. Once the sun hits the shallows and the current slows, the walleyes move to deeper water.”

Wherever you fish for walleyes where there’s a dam and regulated flow, Moser’s style of fishing should work. “When fishing a river or reservoir for the first time, find the deep channels with shallow flats on top and fish the shelves from the top down,” says Moser. “Find where the fish are holding to get food as it passes by and hit those spots.”

Meshing the boat speed with the current flow allowed us to cover 75 feet of water on each side of the boat at times, as opposed to vertically jigging and covering only 8 feet under the boat. Three weights of jigs were used—3/8, 1/4 and 1/2 ounce—allowing us to match the water and boat travel rates.

The jig we used depended on current flows, which varied with the volume of water let out of the dam, the depths being fished and the speed of the boat as it moved slowly downstream.Moser uses soft-plastic grubs and craws that match what fish are eating.

“When you pull up a lot of walleyes, you see them spitting up food, and the imitations I use mimic what I’m seeing,” he says. “If the bite slows, I’ll add some ProCure Crawfish Super Gel scent or Trophy Walleye Super Gel, which can turn on a bite.”

THE ELECTRONICS

With Moser’s approach, you’re casting into the shallows and dropping the jig onto the deep shelves, searching for holding walleyes. You’ll also cast to deep shelves and work the jigs into shallow holding zones. Figuring out what to do and when to do it can be challenging, and this is where Moser relies on electronics.

“I run a Raymarine on split screen so I can plot on a chart and also watch the depths,” he says. “I create a slug trail that shows a line when I’m moving forward and backward depending on current flow, so I use waypoints and count route lines on the map to back down through the same drift and keep baits right in front of fish.”

Moser also uses a Garmin LiveScope that’s like a live feed of whatever’s happening under the boat.

“With this I can see fish, the jigs and even how fish react to the bait,” he says. “I have a scope that allows a 360-degree view out to 100 feet.”

When fishing with Moser, if fish didn’t respond to our jigs on the first pass, we’d change jigs and make the same pass.

“Once we find what walleyes are hitting, we’ll change all the jigs to match and usually everyone starts catching fish,” says the guide. “These advanced electronics have tuned me in to what fish are really doing, not what I think they’re doing.”

Moser hosts clients from all over the country who are eager to hook into a trophy walleye.

“I’d say 90 percent of the time from January through April, we’re catching walleyes over seven pounds, and we’ll have a lot of 30-fish days,” he says. “Usually, we’re releasing four or five fish a day between 7 and 10 pounds.”

Moser’s biggest stretched the tape to 33 1/2 inches and was just shy of 15 pounds.

Three other boats fished near us the morning I spent with Moser. We watched and talked to all of them. None had so much as a bite while trolling and vertically jigging. We released more than a dozen fish, including another I caught that was just a tad under 10 pounds. Moser is on to something, and you can bet I’ll be back to try my luck at a prized walleye that buries the scales to 10 pounds—and possibly bigger.

WHERE TO GO

• Much of the Columbia River system offers the chance at a walleye of a lifetime.

If you’re looking to apply a range of salmon techniques to catch giant walleyes, look for big gravel bars that hold prime food sources. Guide Austin Moser targets 6- to 8-inch river rock where crawdads thrive.

The 1,200-plus-mile Columbia River, with its multiple dams, is the best river in the West for trophy walleyes. The Snake and Willamette rivers are also prime destinations in the Pacific Northwest.

High in the Columbia River finds you at Rufus Woods, between Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph dams, a great starting point with water that’s easy to navigate. Continuing downstream into the lower Columbia River, between Ice Harbor Dam and McNary Dam, is the McNary Pool. With multiple boat launches on both the Oregon and Washington sides, there is no shortage of opportunities.

Above the John Day Dam is the John Day Pool. The varied bottom structure of this stretch will keep fish and anglers on the move as water levels fluctuate.

Both upstream and downstream from The Dalles Dam, even the waters near Portland and Vancouver, can be very good. The river here is big and wide, meaning electronics are a must in order to quickly learn the bottom structure.

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• This article was featured in the April 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe

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