Trip Report Walleye in Northwest Arkansas

[geofri]

Freshwater forum still pretty dead, but I'm not giving up on it yet.


Northwest Arkansas.. it's gotten quite cold. My blood was thinned out by Florida life over the past few years. Still trying to embrace the cold.

The striped bass started dispersing and heading upstream to the lower vis waters in the reservoir I am diving so I started looking for walleye more(I do prefer their meat over striper).

As the water temps dropped through the late fall into winter ( water temps 60-50F) walleye started coming into the shallows and we have been seeing them as shallow at 6FT! 15ft seems to be the average depth they were cruising in amongst the trees.

I threw some clips together on youtube to show what to expect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjY3h61jEWc

As the water temperatures have continued to drop below 50F(especially after that year end storm "Elliott" with sub zero temps) the walleye have disappeared from the normal hunting grounds and I have yet to re-locate them. Not sure if they headed for deeper and warmer water or moved to the shallows.

Hoping to make the first dive of the new year this weekend.. update to follow.

[divenfish]

Nice clip, thanks for sharing!

[geofri]

Originally Posted by divenfish

Nice clip, thanks for sharing!

Thanks!

[MIspearo]

Cool stuff! We just got regulations changed up here in Michigan to allow us to shoot walleye in certain areas. They certainly aren't the smartest fish, but they are the tastiest. Looks like you've got some cool structure there. I've found than in general when the water is cold, it's just really tough to find fish. I'm not sure why. Maybe they just stay really deep. Walleye in particular will just lay motionless on the bottom though, so keep an eye out for that.

[Powers]

I'm semi-surprised, each time I come to Spearboard, that it's still in existence. Thanks for the report! If I ever get back in the water, I'll be sure to post a report.

[rpowers]

Not been on here in a long while. My oldest son is 13 and wanting to go spearing so im gonna break out the gear again and start hitting Beaver when we can. Nice work on the stripers in that one thread. I know they are considered a "trash fish", but i've found some of our favorite fish to be the 5-15# drum i used to shoot out of Beaver. white boneless fillets that hold up really well on a grill or broiled. we used them for fish tacos alot.