Walleye Range Map The original distribution of walleyes included most of central North America, from near the Alaskan border to

In real estate, the three key words are location, location, location. Location determines the ultimate value of a home, business, or structure, no matter how well it’s built or how good it looks. If a property lies in a poor location, its value is suspect at best.

The same principles apply to walleyes, the structures they use, and the lake areas in which they live. Spots can look good, but if they’re not seasonally correct, they may hold few or no walleyes. Conversely, if the area of the lake is seasonally correct, even a meager looking spot may hold loads of fish—for a while. Then, when it’s time to move, walleyes do so without hesitation. If their food moves, if the water grows too warm, or if better opportunities arise in another portion of the lake, on to the next spot travels the movable beast.

To determine walleye location, we must first seek lake areas that provide suitable habitat and food during the current time of year and then evaluate additional options within those areas to determine the likeliest spots for fish to use—a challenging task when you consider the walleye’s propensity to move.

Next to Great Lakes trout and salmon (the freshwater transplants of their far-ranging saltwater cousins), walleyes are perhaps the most migratory of all freshwater gamefish—at least on an annual basis. Other fish may travel farther in their lifetimes; we’ve all heard stories of carp, sturgeon, and other aquatic voyagers who miraculously survive a heroic multiyear passage through a dozen dams spanning a thousand miles, only to wind up on the unfortunate end of some bank fisherman’s handline. Make a good tear-jerker of a movie script, it would: The End of the Line. Sort of a Titanic with fins, producible for a lot less money in a lot shorter package.

Walleyes may not be able to match such fishes’ all-time distance records, but when their cumulative seasonal movements spanning a lifetime of travel are tallied, sufficient mileage gets accrued for at least one sequel. Because walleyes are always on the move; they’re aquatic nomads of the percid kind. And to catch them, it’s necessary to follow them. Just about the time you become comfortable with their locational patterns, adios, muchachos—they’re off on another quest for food, habitat, or some whim of walleye wanderment.

As frustrating as walleyes can be, if you anticipate their needs, it’s possible to use their migratory nature against them, to your advantage. No better example exists than at spawning time, when walleyes often make long-distance movements of dozens of miles, over a hundred miles in some instances, to reach historic spawning grounds. In spring, feeder streams or rivers with rocky substrates; windswept rocky shorelines; the faces of riprapped causeways and dams; and shallow rock reefs poking to or near the surface all draw walleyes to their instinctive destinations. The urge to spawn on the same site every year brings walleyes full circle, back to their point of origin, whether they were naturally spawned or stocked.