Most walleye fishermen catch their fish by fishing points, flats weed lines and they typically catch their fish in water that ranges from 8 feet to 20 feet deep with some fishermen fishing even deeper on some lakes. I just wrote an article about my night fishing action on a trip last year to Eagle River in Wisconsin. I also caught fish a few different ways on my trip and one of the best techniques that worked for me was by fishing wood in 4 to 6 feet of water. There wasn’t a ton of wood in the lakes that I fished, but in the spots that I found wood in the 4 to 6 foot depths, I was using an ultra light spinning rod with 4 pound test rigged with a small hook and a live leech with no weight. I used the light line so I could cast this leech with no weight.

The leech would free fall to the bottom and once it got close to the bottom I would get my strike. With this technique I caught a lot of smaller walleye, but the action was fun and I caught some nice fish to go along with the small fish. In one spot, I caught 6 walleye in about 10 minutes next to a submerged tree. 4 fish were in the 10 to 12 inch range, one was 18 inches and another was 22.5 inches. Not bad for one tree, huh?

This technique definitely worked, but there weren’t enough of these spots on the lakes that I fished. If I was fishing a lake that had a lot of this structure with a good walleye population, this would have been the only way I fished during the entire trip because it was so productive and it was a lot of fun catching walleye with the light tackle. I didn’t loose any fish this way either.

For more information on walleye and the top walleye fishing destinations, take a look at our walleye fishing page.
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