Reading water color for more crankbait walleyes

[fishhawk2700]

To be clear, nothing in fishing is ever absolute. There are always caveats and exceptions. Like I said in the article, the Central basin is one of those exceptions. I have caught tons of big walleyes in clear water in the Central basin. Mostly on spoons, but that's because that's what we generally run when fishing for Steelies.

I also said that there are times when we can't find any stained water, and we are forced to fish in the clean. In those situations, I go very natural and fish my boards really far from the boat. We can usually scratch out a few doing that.

I also mentioned low light conditions. This could be early or late, or even just dark dreary days. That said, on most days, if I have the choice to fish muddy, clear or stained, I will always try the stained water first and it rarely ever fails.

Example: Last year over by Fermi, we were marking fish like crazy, but we could not buy a bite. A few junk fish here and there, but no walleyes. With all of the marks I was seeing, it was hard to leave, however, the water was just too clean for my liking. I decided to pull lines and run South. After a few miles, I could see the color changing. I told my crew that we were about to catch them. There was zero doubt in my mind based on the water color. I went a couple miles into the greenish water and set up. Within a couple minutes we had a 4 lb'er on and it never stopped the rest of the day. That was just one example of many over the 40+ years I have been fishing this system.

This was exactly my point. There are a lot of factors involved in determining when and where to fish, and we could discuss determining factors until we are blue in the face. Your thread is a very good piece of info for a newbie to store away. If you have been pulling cranks that long, I'm sure you must remember pre quagga/zebra muscle days. When the lake was quiet, it all had the perfect stain. Best bite was midday.

[slimshady]

The good news is if you can find that perfect color mid-day still rocks! The photos in my original article were all taken mid-day and it got better as the day went on.