Walleye
The walleye has often the reputation of being much smaller than its European cousin, the pike-perch, but some of them have not much to envy. Indeed, walleye can reach very respectable sizes, we are talking about 95cm to 105cm in rare cases, which is still a very beautiful fish.
Do not fish like others
In France, we are lucky to have a good culture of vertical pike fishing, influenced, among others, by the Netherlands. I consider the behavior of the walleye similar to that of the zander and that is how I fish it in Canada. The boats I meet there all fish in the same way. They drift very slowly, not to say that they are static, and use very heavy leaded heads, with small soft lures such as shad, finess or worms. Concerning the animation I could observe two schools: some practice a wide and intensive jigging, while others, reduce their animation to the minimum. It is always interesting, when we meet other anglers abroad, to exchange on our techniques. I'm not saying that Quebecers don't know how to fish, on the contrary, but I think that the local method is effective on small fish, which seems to be the target of most fishermen. Indeed, it is an easy technique to use and there are minimum and maximum sizes of catch to keep the fish, I think that the sport fishing of the big ones does not interest many people here. This may be the reason why walleye has the reputation of a small fish.
The lure
No no, I didn't make any mistakes in my subtitle, it's the decoy, or rather : THE lure. Here too, bringing your own lures that you can't find on the spot, is an advantage. During my previous session, I had finished this one with the One Up Shad in 4" white from Sawamura, mounted on a Fox Rage lead head of natural color and tapered shape for a minimal resistance during my drifts, in 14 grams.
That's how I started this new session and that's also how I ended it. Well, not exactly, because the only thing that changed was that after having my lure bag emptied by the walleyes, I had to switch to the same lure, but in 5" size, with the same success. Compared to this previous session, the water had risen about 1.50 m and had gone from clear to murky, with a tint that tended towards brown and reduced visibility. With such a water color, white is a color I particularly like.
If I have one piece of advice to give if you are traveling, use your knowledge and your equipment used in your home country to make a difference on the spot. There is no lack of examples, and this will often allow you to make very good fishing quickly. Try to be original!
