point to ponder

[b1gf1sh1]

everybody who fishes hears things over and over about certain ways to catch different fish,sometimes we observe things ourselves. we may blow off some, untill we hear it enough times that it actually sounds like a good idea. kind of like somebody you don't know telling you that you have a tail. most would just shrug it off, say he's nut's and keep walking. then another would say it and we might figure it's some kind of joke or something. but by the time five or six tell us that we got a tail, almost all of us would have looked to see what the heck was going on back there. so goes it with fishing tips. my question is about something i've observed. i have my own predetermined ideas as to why it is so, but i'm interested in hearing what others think, know for sure, or just have an oppinion about it. it is about Walleye and Walleye only.(depth is irrelevent) o.k. here goes. i see shad/emeralds near shore inside eddies in almost total dead water. i fish and fish but get very few fish, and the ones i do get are not large enough to call a trophy. but if i find some pretty good current and there are about as many shad/emeralds at the edges and i fish that area with different presentations, like, jig, crank, threeway with crank just hanging letting current create action...etc. i get much better results? why do you think i get bigger fish near and in the current? like i said i have my own thoughts on this but i want to hear what others think before i write it out. my theory is multi-faceted and extremely complex so feel free to confuse me.also for a throw in ... why do you think pods of emeralds are almost always over the top of pods of shad?(besides the fact they live in the top 3 feet almost exclusively)

[b1gf1sh1]

nobody has any theories? mabe everybody's fishing. ok no biggy i'll wait a little bit longer for some theories from peeps then give mine and accept any critiques

[blueroof]

Quote:

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i see shad/emeralds near shore inside eddies in almost total dead water. i fish and fish but get very few fish, and the ones i do get are not large enough to call a trophy. but if i find some pretty good current and there are about as many shad/emeralds at the edges and i fish that area... ...why do you think pods of emeralds are almost always over the top of pods of shad?(besides the fact they live in the top 3 feet almost exclusively)

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Hey biggie, I'm thinking the reason you have better luck when you see the bait fish on the edges of current is because the fish are down there attacking and causing disarray, the shad you see are re-schooling on the outside edges trying to live another day. The shad in the dead water are probably feeding, not as likely under attack by monsters. The emerald/shad stack is because they are likely feeding together, one probably leads the other. I'll ask some of the fish next time I'm out..

LB

[hanson]

Its an easy meal.

Fish want to eat, and they want to do it while expending as little energy as possible (they really don't like current). Most river fish love these seams as they can sit in the slack water and pick off the food as it comes by in the current. An eddy or current seam is a vertical (left/right) seam in the river. Same happens at holes, behind humps, etc, except the seam is now horizontal (up/down). A lot of river fish will tuck up in the front of the hole so they can be out of the current yet still grab that easy meal.

Current also equals oxygen which is more important in the summer months when high water temps and slack water equal low oxygen content.

[b1gf1sh1]

thanks mr. blue and mr.hanson. i knew i'd sucker someone into telling me why ... nah really... both great answers and part of what i've observed. keep in mind anything you read is only what i think is going on and not the result of any deep scientific study by me, mostly while sipping coffee and eating donuts trying to figure out why that piggy hit here . to start large walleye are large because they are old. which means they've been eating for awhile. (bear with me and the obvious stuff ) during their life they have eaten in alot of ways and areas. smaller walleyes, 20'' and under, are young (or males)and have'nt really figured out the whole eating game yet. bait fish in wide open spaces escape predaters much easier because of several reasons. just a few of these would be. they can escape in a 360 degree sphere around them as there is no ''trapping'' areas. they can feel the ''wave'' from an attacking fish comming for them, they can see an attack better when they are'nt stressed, huge pods of shad in a concentrated area would deplete avalable oxygen making that area undesireable. mabe a few more but let's stop there. all of these make it not worth the energy spent to grt the meal. in current a baitfish (especially wide boddied) is out of control and easily rendered helpless. (from what i've seen) that makes it an easy meal. mainly what i have seen is pods of shad (rememmber this is in current not dead water bars, humps or fast water holes) near the edge of fast water,within 15 feet, jumping all over heck. these i assume(oops ) are feeding fish below them. as they are getting messed up they scatter away. some away from the current some to it. the ones that get terrorized into the current now become as helpless as can be. the current is tossing them around like rag dolls and now are easy money. bigger walleye and older males know this and i believe are the ones feeding directly in the current. about 4-5 feet in the current from the edge is where i get most larger fish. i fish in several ways and the results are ''almost'' allways the same. in essence every defense that a baitfish had out of that current is now moot. once they were herded there it's over. bigger fish learn over time not to bother with that whole chase em around thing. i think piggy's hang close to schools of smaller walleye, sheephead(in river), whites and others and feed off the baitfish that are herded into that current by them. that way they expend almost no energy- sly old broads- getting their meals. i say this because when i upsize my lures untill i stop getting those smaller 'eyes i get the trophy's(rarely). this is how i got my 34 1/2'' 14 1/2 lb. Sow(released) a few years back. and my 33''ers and several from 28 to 32. i've read piggy's don't school like smaller fish. maybe, maybe not. jury's out on this one. i could say yes they do because of several piggy's caught in one area and say no because they just might be following the same pattern, and it's a coincidence.who knows? of course just the fact there is current and shad don't mean just smaller walleye are there and no big. and mabe big ones are there and no small ones. mabe none.who knows. i use this pattern and get skunked(as you seen blue, and yes this is what i was trying to do we just never even got a little one ) also i think because of the size of a piggy they are less affected by current. i know large muskie and pike and cat's are'nt as affected and prefer to munch in current, from what i've observed. same i think is true for big walleye. as far as emeralds being over the top of shad i think it has mostly to do with defense. emeralds are the premier food in this river. the shad below get eaten first, and alert the emeralds to attacking fish by going nut's. mabe this is why when i drop an emerald just below the shad it's almost always a sure immediate fish. drop a shad in same spot and it could be a fish fast or a short wait. and a fatty or crappie dropped gets nothing or a very long wait till one does eat it. i think it's defensive. and blue i tried asking a fish once ... what's glub, glip,glub, gluuuub, ploop ploop mean? man i'm bored. must be a million words here. anybody else have some current catching stories? rememmber the tail tale above. the more we hear it the more we will start looking.

[UncleKes]

I suspect this might be a forage thing with the Emeralds and other bait fish. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that minnows are both prey fish and predator fish. They eat tiny things like zooplankton and phytoiplankton that get blown around by wind and current and eventualy get stacked up a long the shore in eddys and slack water places. The minnows follow the plankton to feed and the walleyes and otehr larger predator fish follow the minnows. This is , of course, the Food Chain we all studied in Biology class in school. I won't say I am right about this, but that would be my guess.