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Captain Dan’s October Walleye Pulse

Category: article

 Oct 13th, 2008 by OutdoorsFIRST 

Modified Oct 13th, 2008 at 12:00 AM

Welcome to the Walleye Pulse! 

	Walleye Pulse

Many of you are familiar with or know me from the Walleye First message board. I have made a personal decision not to interact on the boards, but was made an offer by OutdoorsFIRST  to continue to offer relevant, educational, and entertaining information of interest to walleye anglers everywhere by submitting fishing articles and local news from the Saginaw Bay area.

Hopefully, this will be a Monthly compilation, of both Saginaw Bay Area news concerning our fishery, along with quasi fishing reports, that will include pictures, techniques new or old, product reports, and personal success or failure reports from my own charter business. Many of these reports of course will be, and are universal in nature with many other areas in the U.S., so could and will aide anybody wanting too learn more about walleye fishing in general. It may also include local Great Lakes news or specific questions and there answers, that might be submitted by it’s readers to me via my E-mail or my web contact address. I will try to make it an all inclusive informational tool to keep all who read it abreast of just when, where and what is going on (in my capacity) in the fishing world and on the Saginaw Bay. And include general fishing knowledge to help the novice or beginner understand the walleye fishing sport better.

Thank you!
Captain Dan Manyen
 

October Walleye Pulse:
 
October might well be considered the second month of a wallleye catching slow down transition period on the Saginaw Bay. Historically, this transition starts in September sometime with our first frost or when fall storms start moving through the area. Although you can stumble onto pods of willing biters on the bay at this time, most walleye seem to disperse more widely, strike more timidly or simply turn off during this time on the Bay proper. Some, usually the smaller males, will at some point gather and start filtering into the Saginaw River itself. They do so too fallow and feed on the schools of shad that crowd into the rivers as the Bay water temps cool off. This marks the beginning of another fishery and one that I love and look forward to every year.
 
Depending on rainfall and water clarity, the river jig bite, although not as popular as the summer trolling season, can give you some real excitement. And as the nights and the water temps cool even more as the month wears on, even more and some bigger fish move into the river systems harassing the big pods of shad. That’s when I’ll do some late afternoon vertical jigging and revert over to after dark trolling. But the really best time for night time trolling is during the months of November and December, so to add it to the Octobers walleye pulse would not be 100% accurate. I will cover this more extensively in later walleye pulse reports.
 
Our jig fishing techniques on the Saginaw River are pretty much like everyone else’s. Find the right weight jig to stay in contact with the bottom, and either use an artificial or live bait attractor as the food incentive. You can fish and catch walleyes in the entire Saginaw River system at this time. But I’ve grown to prefer the upper stretches of the river, right where the river runs through the City of Saginaw itself. The walleyes tend to stall and stack up in that first mile section below where two very shallow rivers (the Shiawassee and Tittabawassee) converge with the headwaters of the Saginaw. Slipping the current and vertical jigging is the preferred method, but anchoring and quarter casting can also pay off when you know specific spots where the fish stack up. Quarter casting is my preferred and best technique during later months, and I’ll talk about this in the November and December walleye pulse, when I start to target those fish up in the much shallower Tittaabwassee River. As for now, that’s about it for the October walleye pulse. I’m going to include a couple of October walleye catch pictures from previous trips on the river in this issue. And add the September DNR Trawl results for Saginaw Bay to this installment as well, as it is pertinent to our fisheries near future. If you have any questions about this report or my guiding/charter service you can E-mail me at [email protected]
 
Capt: Dan Manyen. http://www.walleye-express.com Seminar Speaker/Published Freelance Writer/Chartering on Saginaw Bay 13 years/Guiding on Saginaw/Tittabawassee/Pere Marquette/Big Manistee Rivers 24 years. 4 seasons outfitter. Pro-Staffer. Daves Lures, Michigan Stinger Spoons, Power Pro Line, Mustad Hooks, Bandit Lures, Sworming Hornet Lures, Wiggle Disc, Tommy Harris Blades, Big Al’s Tackle, Franks Great Outdoors, and http://www.Electronicguideservice.com

Trawl results:
 
Hi Dan.
 
I knew you’d be after me as soon as September was over about the trawl results. All results are preliminary as of now of course. Early observations indicate a trawl catch rate of about 6 age-0 walleye per 10 minute tow (average). This makes it the 6th highest average catch rate for the trawl time series (since 1971). It means another good walleye year class for 2008. Its not as strong as the ones we have mostly seen since 2003 but still pretty darn good and solid.
 
The 2007 year class (based on the catch rate in our gillnet collections) was the second highest we’ve measured since the surge in reproduction that began in 2003. No doubt you have been catching many of these little 12 & 13 inch fish. There are lots of them and that bodes very well for continued abundance of walleye in the bay.
 
Yellow perch remain in low abundance relative to past surveys but there was definitely some there. The age-0 perch were not nearly as abundant as recent years but that may be a good thing, meaning that they will grow better and survive better. We’ll see.
 
Once we get all the lab work done (like aging the fish) and do the data analysis, we’ll know a lot more. By late winter we’ll have the annual creel survey results too. Check back with me on it around early March.