Walleye are schooling fish. They tend to feed in bunches scattered along rocky flats, near drop-offs, along underwater islands, or in any area where the underwater structure has a tendency to attract food or funnel baitfish. Like all game fish, walleye are opportunistic when it comes to foraging. They will seek out any situation that offers plentiful food that is easy to catch. So, why is this important? Because on Uchi Lake, if you pull your boat into a likely looking area and start fishing and haven’t caught a walleye in the first 5 to 10 minutes, you need to move on! That doesn’t mean you can’t try that area at another time, but if fish are present in a certain spot, the odds are that you will start catching them very quickly, often on the first cast.

A fine way to locate large schools of walleye, especially in spring and early summer, is trolling crankbaits along main lake shorelines as well as steep banks leading into large bays. Shad Raps and baits with a tight wobble are extremely effective on walleye. Keep your boat over ten to twenty feet of water, varying the depth. When you catch a fish trolling, try to imagine where the fish hit, then motor back to that spot and cast jigs. Yes, you could keep trolling, but you may miss out on a massive school of walleye.

Jigging twister tail grubs on 1/8 to 1/4 ounce lead head jigs is a deadly technique for finding and catching walleye. You can either cast the jig out and work it back to the boat, or release the bail and drop the bait straight down. Either way, walleye love soft body grubs. You may have to vary your presentation from bouncing the jig off the bottom, to a more subtle lift and drop technique for warier fish. Remember, fish will almost always hit the jig on the drop, so pay close attention as the jig is falling back to the bottom. Let the fish tell you how they want it.

As far as color goes for twister tail grubs, don’t get too hung up. On this Canadian fly-in lake, walleye will hit anything from white to black and everything in between. Don’t complicate your fishing. But if you need a couple of real confidence colors, go with bright orange, fluorescent red, or lime green. You can’t go wrong. Tests have shown that walleye can see these colors best. On tougher days, try tipping the jig/twister combo with a live minnow.

Another technique that works well on deep fish, walleye in ten to thirty feet of water, is vertical jigging small gold or colored spoons. Narrow slab spoons seem to work better than the wider, flatter spoons. Start with light spoons, 1/8 to 1/4 ounce, anything you can fish comfortably and still feel on light equipment. A simple jerk up/ flutter back action works just fine. Be alert and watch your line. Walleye will always hit this bait on the drop, even though you may not feel them until you start to jig the spoon up again.

Wind blown banks, points, and shorelines. Yes, instead of cursing that wind that makes it so hard to control the boat, fish those spots being whipped to a froth. Wind stirs up particles and food from rocks and weeds, which activates baitfish, which sets the entire ecosystem into a feeding frenzy. Remember, walleye are opportunistic. They will exploit any easy feeding situation, and wind creates plenty of those.

One final note. Uchi Lake fly-in adventures are about catching lots of fish, as well as big fish. Don’t settle for less. If you’re not catching walleye, move to another spot, or try fishing deeper, or shallower. There’s no mistaking when you’ve found fish. The action is constant. If it slows or stops altogether, wait a while, keep fishing…it could mean that a huge pike has moved into the area. Pike get excited seeing all those walleye coming off the bottom at the end of your line and will often grab one and try to take off with it. That’s what Canadian fly-in fishing is all about. Action and big fish!

Uchi offers fantastic fishing for several reasons, one of them being that the lake is fished only 3 months out of the entire year, and by only a small number of anglers, Uchi Lodge anglers. The short time period coupled with the small number of fisherman barely constitutes fishing pressure on a lake the size of Uchi. The other 9 months of the year walleye never see a hook, bait, boat, or fisherman.

One of the other reasons Uchi boasts such astounding fishing, both in numbers and size, is the conservation practice. On many Canadian fly-in lakes, coolers full of fish are carried out week after week, all summer long. Many of these fish are prime spawners that will never spawn again, fish in the one- to three-pound range. When you consider that walleye in Canadian Shield lakes can take as many as seven years or longer to reach two pounds, you can easily see how the removal of such fish over time can hurt the fishery. But on Uchi, these key spawners are returned to the water day after day to reproduce and fight again, making for a better spawn the following spring, and more fun for you on your Uchi fly-in adventure.