Of course the weather affects the fertilization rate and survival rate. Otherwise there would be much less deviation in the hatch from one year to the next. Also I believe when you have extreme blows, or many blows throughout the spawn it beats the hell out of them resulting less fish surviving the spawn. Think about it, all these fish staging up in 5 feet to 20 on the reefs. When it’s like that, they can’t see anything and are in 7 to 12 foot waves, in 5 to 20 feet of water, beating the hell out of them. Walk the beach after a couple of big blows during the spawn, dead walleye everywhere.