Walleye Spawning Behavior

When and where do walleye spawn? It all depends on the body of water and its temperature. On northern lakes, the temperature that triggers walleye spawn is between 40 and 45 farenheit, while down south it's a warn 50-55 degrees. In both cases, it is when the water begins to warm up after winter, so it happens in the spring.



Walleyes can spawn in lakes, but most of the time if there is a tributary available, like a small river or large creek, with a rocky bottom and a slight current, or a wind swept shore, they will spawn there, typically in shallow waters (between 1 and 6 feet deep).

First to move close to spawning grounds are always large groups of males. They will approach when water temperatures rise above freezing. Females will move into the area weeks later when water temperatures approach 40 degrees.

They both will remain in deep water though, right up until about one week before spawning begins, which is when they will move into the shallows and start feeding aggressively. Spawning itself lasts one to two weeks at the most, but depending on the weather, it can be prolonged or shortened, or sometimes, though this is rare, spawning never happens because the right weather doesn't occur quickly enough.

How do walleye spawn? Well, the females will simply release their eggs with a little help from one or two males who will bump her sides, emitting milt as they bump. The females will drop 50,000 to 300,000 eggs (average 175,000) in one night.

The fertilized eggs will drop between the rocks. There, predators will have great difficulty reaching them, so they can mature safely. Over 25% of all the eggs will hatch, as opposed to silt bottoms, where only 1% may hatch.

Walleye do not stay over the eggs to protect them, instead they leave right after spawning is over. Depending on water temperature, fry will emerge from the eggs after just one or two weeks. They will feed off the egg sac for a few days. One in 1,000 fry will survive the spring and summer to reach fingerling size, and between 5% and 10% (7.5% average) of fingerlings will survive to catchable size.

So to recapitulate, if the average female drops 175,000 eggs on a rocky bottom, 43,750 eggs will hatch, 43 of them will survive to fingerling, and 3.2 of them will make it to catchable size. The same scenario on a muddy bottom yields no mature fish.

After spawning, the male walleye will remain in the same area, but instead of protecting the eggs, they continue to feed quite aggressively for about one month. Females have a different behavior, they will move to their early summer habitat very soon after spawning, where they will rest for a period of about 2 weeks. Once they have recuperated from spawn, they will also start looking for lots of food.

Post-spawn is known as the best time of the year to catch trophy walleye, the big females are just gorging themselves, and if you know where they are, you will catch more fish and bigger fish at this time of the year than at any other time.

In the Montreal area, post spawn generally happens about mid may and lasts til about mi june. Thankfully, this is also when fishing season for walleye begins. Lake Saint Pierre opens around may 13th, and the rest of the Saint Lawrence, including lake Saint Louis and Lake Saint Francois, open around may 20th.

These dates change year after year, so do pay attention to rules and regulations (which are not published for 2005 as of yet).

FlyFishing in Montreal

There are several good spots one can use a flyrod in and around Montreal, but none compare to the Lachine rapids. I have been hearing about this place for years, everyone who has fished it tells me it is a good spot for brown trout and rainbows, but I have never been able to get anyone to take me there.

This is going to change. This spring, one of my new fishing buddies has offered to take me on a day trip to Sainte Catherine (the south shore part of the Lachine rapids). I went on a scouting mission last week, the rapids are quite impressive. They stretch for quite a while, the water appears shallow enough to wade, and I hear there is trout and even salmon there. Since ice fishing has been so-so this winter, Ivery much look forward to this expedition.

To learn more on this area and how it is fished, please read Luis Nasim's article, "Fly Fishing in Montreal" it is at once poetic and informative, definitely the best read I had on the subject.

Bear Attack

I thought this was hilarious:

Bear Attack

Keep Minnows Alive in your Bucket

On any average day, it takes about an hour to kill off a bucket full of minnows, and in the summer, they will die off even quicker. There are 3 important reasons why your minnows always seem to die this quickly :

• Rapid changes in temperature
• Lack of oxygen, and
• Dirty water

To avoid these problems, there are a few things you should consider:

1. Minimize the period of time your minnows will spend in your car. Cars tend to get hot in the summer, and fish die really quickly when temperatures vary too quickly. Also minnows don't handle the stress of a constantly vibrating bucket too well. In other words, try to get your livebait as close as possible from your destination.

2. Try to get a minnow bucket with a foam insulator to minimize heat transfer through the walls. This is also key in the winter to prevent getting too cold and freezing.

Frabill's Kool Keeper is an insulated minnow bucket

3. If you can't find such an insulated bucket, then put your "normal" minnow bucket in an ice chest with one or two small ice paks to keep it cool.

4. To provide oxygen, you can buy oxygen pills, or you can buy an air pump designed to hang off the side of the bucket. Obviously, the pump is the best option here, pills don't require batteries, but the pump will last 60 hours on 2 "D" cells.

Rapala's Bucket Aerator works wonders for me

5. Finally, some people will use a small plastic ice chest combined with an aerator and let the minnows swim directly in the ice chest.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you will enjoy much livelier minnows, and very few will die before the day ends, which makes for more productive time on the water.

Keep Minnows alive at Home - Live Bait Aquarium

If you have ever kept pet fish at home, then you know how to keep minnows, except you will need to keep the minnows in a cool room, typically the basement in most homes will do fine.

In terms of equipment, you will need :

• an aquarium
• an aquarium filter
• air stone
• electric pump
• fish flakes
• screen mesh cover

The filter, pump and stone are critical to keep the water oxygenated. You only need to feed them a few flakes once in a while. If 5 minutes after feeding there are flakes left, then you fed them too much (and you should definitely remove those extra flakes from the surface!)

You will need to change their water occasionally. To change the water, make sure to use water with no chlorine, and make sure it has been in the same room as the aquarium so that it has the same temperature. Proceed by removing no more than 1/3 of the water at a time.

Make sure you have the top covered completely with a mesh screen, for example you can build one with a wood frame and fly screen. This is to prevent the inevitable escape attempts, minnows will jump out of the tank regularly, so do yourself a favor and prevent this from happening right from the start.

For more information, visit LiveBait Technologies

Ice Fishing the Boucherville Islands

We went to the Boucherville Islands yesterday afternoon. This place is located between Montreal and Boucherville, on the Saint Lawrence river. To get there one needs to use the road leading to the Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine Tunnel, and get off at the @Iles de Boucherville@ exit, where you see the big hotel.

We fished an area near the golf club, between 2 islands. In the summertime this area is reserved for a ferry, but in wintertime, it's open to anyone.

The first thing to know if you plan on going there : it is a very busy place, with hundreds of people walking around, it does not make for a quiet place to fish. Thee are also frequent visits by snowsleds and atvs.

There were 4 of us fishing, and no one caught anything, we moved to different depths, there were a few delicate bites on our jigging rods (missing minnows), but we didn't land one.

There may be another trip to this area next weekend, hopefully there won't be so many people this time.