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 Fishing begins in late spring as post-spawners concentrate at river holes, river-mouths, inlets, rocky shorelines, sandbars, shallow reefs, sunken islands, and emerging weedbeds. Using jigs weighing 1/8- to 3/8-ounce, dressed with soft-plastic twister-tail or shad bodies, marabou feathers or bucktail, is one of the easiest and most effective ways to fish. Hungry walleye dispersing from spawning areas seldom refuse a jig, especially when tipped with a minnow or a worm. Vertical jig or cast to rocky shorelines, shoals, and weedlines. In stained lakes, chartreuse, lime green, yellow, pink, and white are effective jig colours. When adding bait, use a stinger hook to catch walleye that strike short.
 By mid-summer, walleye travel to deeper structure, such as sunken islands, main-lake points, drop offs, shoals, and mid-lakeweed flats. Spring tactics and baits still take them, but are usually fished deeper, so heavier jigs, rigs, and deep diving lures are called for.
Walleye usually hold near bottom, but there are exceptions. In many clear inland lakes, big walleye often suspend and feed on schooling baitfish such as cisco, alewives, shiners, or smelt. These fish are usually the biggest in the lake, because of their rich diet. Deep-diving crank baits, downriggers, drop-weights, diving planers, and lead-core or wire lines can be used to troll for these oversized fish.
Walleye have eyes adapted to low-light feeding. Many fish are caught at night by trolling crank baits along weedlines, rocky points, and over sunken reefs. Some of the largest walleye are taken this way during evenings of a full moon.
In autumn, many walleye move deeper and gorge on forage fish, including ciscoes, smelt, and perch, which have grown in size over summer. In general, a move to larger baits in fall pays off. Three- to 6-inch minnows excel when attached to slip-sinker rigs and back-trolled or drifted over key structures, or used on jigs for vertical presentations. Search for reefs topping off at 15- to 30-foot (4.6 to 9.1 m) depths.
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