With Notes On The Columbia River

What goes up—comes down. And it’s on the way down that walleyes—most fish for that matter—eat the thing, so long as the thing meets other standards of approval.

Most anglers understand this, especially as it applies to fishing with a jig. We lift the jig—we let it fall. Fishing open water in rivers and reservoirs at this time of year, most anglers assume the lift-fall movement should be gentle and the lures should be small. It’s pretty much the First Commandment in early-season walleye fishing. After all, the water’s not just cold but frigid. The fish are temperamental. Lethargic. Easy does it.

Sometimes, for sure. Yet, as always, there’s another end to every spectrum that sometimes applies in the same situation. At times, a jig zipped up and down can be the best thing to put in a fish’s face. What might be called “alternative jigs” do this better than most. I want to offer a bit of background perspective before discussing them.

Reinforced in my travels across North America last year is just how important an abrupt lift-fall movement can be. I’m talking a wrist snap or a quick arm-lift to raise a lure, followed by allowing the lure to make an almost slack-line dead drop back to the bottom. This primarily imitates an injured baitfish like a shad or shiner in the final death stage. Struggling, some of them flip-flop and flutter to the bottom, touch down and immediately lift off, only to drift back down again. Other struggles are more erratic, darting off bottom, struggling wildly, and darting back down—until the end, which often comes abruptly in the mouth of a walleye or a sauger.

By the time walleyes (and saugers) are adults, they’ve seen and reacted to these movements so often that they can’t help themselves. It’s a sure meal. In the face of this death rattle they’re programmed not to scrutinize but to attack.

We used the dart-up-down movement last year to fish vertically with 7-ounce lures for muskies in the Detroit River. It’s the movement we used to cast and fish a big spoon for largemouths at Lake Fork and several other fine largemouth waters. It’s the movement I used to experiment with other spoons in a half dozen other environments for walleyes, smallmouths, and pike—a story for another issue. Again, not just a lift-fall, but a snap followed by an almost slack-line dead-drop fall. Not just with spoons, but with a variety of lures.

When it comes to walleyes and saugers, you’re most likely to see this movement in action when you get outside of the traditional Walleye Belt. These are “folks who don’t know any better,” some from the Belt would say: Heretics who have never heard of the First Commandment. This applies to sauger anglers across the Mason-Dixon South—and to many of the anglers on fisheries like the Detroit River, and the St. Lawrence. Also to quite a few anglers fishing river and reservoir walleyes with lures like the Reel Bait Fergy Spoon in Kansas, Nebraska, and Saskatchewan. And anglers fishing Lake Powell, Meredith, and other reservoirs in the Southwest. Also anglers fishing the Columbia River in the Northwest.

To kick-start my re-education in how this abrupt lift-fall movement can work, last March I am with Guide Jason Schultz on the Columbia River, fishing near Irrigon, Oregon, several miles downriver from McNary dam. This is big-walleye water—not just this section but also the areas up- and downriver. Mike Hepper catches the new Washington record in February last year (19.3 pounds) fishing just upriver near his home in Richland. This day he’s in a boat fishing the same stretch of the river we’re on.

For an angler from the heart of the Walleye Belt, being on the Columbia can at times seem a little like being transported to another walleye planet. Many of the rules all us Belt-bound walleye anglers grew up with are at times pretty much out the window. It makes me smile that they have no idea they’re not normal and, furthermore, that they don’t care. They, after all, catch most of the biggest walleyes in the world.

Hepper is largely unknown in most of the walleye world except perhaps for passing notation of his new record. Yet he probably is one of the most successful big-walleye anglers of all time. These days he’s on the water about 200 days a year. Besides the 19, he’s caught a 17.35 and an 18.57, plus dozens of other fish in the teens. Of the existence of fish larger than his record he has no doubt. This is yet another story for another day.