Spring Walleye and Shallow Water Fishing

I can't believe it's March already and in a couple months the ice will be melting and walleye season will be getting close to opening.  Although for me it's a busy time of year with the start of our tourist season, getting all the houseboats ready, it's also nice to have open water fishing to look forward to.  I love getting out on the water and doing some fishing.  So much, in fact, that a couple friends and I started an online fishing show to give fishing tips for the area.

Rapala, the staple for trolling shallow.

During our first few weeks we spend a lot of time hitting the shorelines for walleye coming off the spawning beds and hitting the shallows for the minnows to feed on.  Our target area is anywhere from 4 to 8 feet along the shoreline.  Just any lure won't do in that kind of situation, so we go with the trusty Floating Rapala, allowing us to get the lure up shallow quickly when we hit those 4 foot areas (or less if we missed our trolling run).  I've always run black and silver original and jointed Rapalas in the spring, but with the start of the show, I wanted to try and focus on using low cost alternatives.  My motto was "successful fishing on a budget".

Family and Hobbies DO mix...

Parked comfortably at a campsite.

Two years ago we took a vacation on Lake Temagami where we live.  Why go away when you are already in the most beautiful place around?  We packed up the family on one of our houseboats at our family houseboat rentals business.  We headed to Cross Lake and found a nice secluded campsite and started to relax.

Yes, I had an work to do while out there, but it was fun work.  That was the first year I had decided to start a small web series on fishing in the area.  We're almost finished cutting all the footage we took that summer, and it has been a fun ride.  So fun we videoed more episodes this summer...