Night Fishing for Walleye

Catch more Walleye Fishing at Night

You can fill your livewell with walleye during the day, but night is when they are most active.  Walleye are, by nature, a somewhat lazy fish, sticking close to its food source, even when not feeding, and when they are, they don’t like to go out of their way to get a meal.  These characteristics, combined with their highly reflective eyes that give them a huge advantage over prey in low light conditions, make night the most popular time for walleyes to feed, especially in clear water.  Although night fishing might not be every angler’s preference, the temperature after dark is more comfortable during the summer, and the walleye are active and somewhat predictable, making it tough not to consider hitting the water at night.

Since night fishing for walleye focuses on shallow water, it is important to seek out promising feeding areas during the day instead of trying to negotiate submerged or hard to see obstacles at night.  Some of the most productive areas to night fish are drop offs, breaklines, or the edges of structures, especially if weed lines or weed beds are present.  Although walleye may not be feeding specifically in these areas, many walleye will ‘hang-up” here before going into shallow water or heading back into deeper water.  Also, if you notice an area with lot of baitfish during the day, you can bet the walleye won’t let them get a good night’s sleep.  Identifying prime features and locations by day and scanning them with your fishfinder to hone in on schools of active walleye will help ensure that you spend as much time as possible with your line in the water. 

Because low lighting decreases the visibility of typical bait, getting your bait noticed sometimes requires an extra effort.  Placing reflectors or glow-in-the-dark paint on jigs and lures can help grab a walleye’s attention, as well as rattling lures, though the scent and movement of live bait can work just as well. 

Keep in mind that walleye do not strike very hard at night, so stay alert and ready for that sometimes nearly undetectable bump.  As always, rigged live bait should be fished a little slower, while crankbaits, jigging spoons, and jigs should be ran along the bottom and worked upwards through the water, unless your depthfinder shows them suspended off the bottom.  In any case, getting your hook, no matter what it is, right in front of the walleye’s nose is the key to triggering a strike. 

It is also easy to pattern night feeding walleye.  Although they may not be on the same points or structures every night, they will get in a routine of feeding most aggressively at about the same time each night, though cold fronts typically cause their timing to shift.  This means that the second and third night of fishing tends to be more productive, since you know a little more about how they are acting. 

However, since night is when walleye are feeding the most, it is tough to resist walleye fishing at night.