Baitfish and young-of-the-year fish like crappies, perch, and bullheads use shoreline weeds or flooded timber to hide from predators. A weedless jig, like Lindy's Veg-E-Jig, is ideal for working livebait or soft plastic baits through weeds and wood. The key is to hop and weave your bait through the cover slowly enough to give walleyes time to react to and ambush your bait.

Shallow-running cranks, such as a Rapala Floating Minnow, or neutrally-buoyant minnowbaits, such as a Smithwick Suspending Super Rogue, are top crankbait choices in the shallows. At rest, neutrally buoyant baits hang level, neither rising nor sinking--a proven trigger for trailing walleyes.

Jigs tipped with soft plastic, like a Berkley Power Grub, or soft-plastic shad bodies featuring a heavy boot tail like Mister Twister's Sassy Shad, also are top producers. Large-profile soft plastic shad bodies, like a Walleye Assassin 4-inch Turbo Shad, rigged on a jighead, are good baits at night. A grub rigged on an 1/8-ounce jig's a good combo for most shallow situations. Use a slow, steady retrieve with an occasional lift and drop to trigger strikes.

A Few Shoreline Locations:

• Narrows--thin, bottlenecked waterways connecting two larger bodies of waterÂ¥funnel fish when there's enough current to attract baitfish and walleyes.
• In moderately fertile and fertile lakes check areas where running water enters the lake or where necked-down areas create current between lakes.
• Sandy beaches in shallow, fertile lakes, and around the edges of swimming beaches on any walleye lake.
• River eddies below dams, large and small.
• The confluence of tributary streams.
• Larger eddy areas where the river widens below prominent barriers like waterfalls or rapids, particularly in Canadian Shield lakes.
• In reservoirs, check the flats at the mouth of prominent creek arms where the creek arm connects to the main reservoir.
• Prominent points inside major creek arms.
• Riprap along the dam face or shorelines.
• In Canadian Shield lakes, flats or points at the mouth of shallow, sandy bays near deep water in the main lake attract fish.
• In fertile lakes, sandy points at the mouth of muck bays attract fish during the autumn frog migration.