Some N.C. mountain lakes have good numbers of walleyes; catching them proves the worth of an angler.
The late Luther Turpin was widely and rightly hailed as the guru of Fontana Lake smallmouth.
During decades of association with the Marina at Fontana Village, he guided untold numbers of anglers on the sprawling waters of this jewel of a mountain reservoir, and most of them focused on bronzebacks. After all, Turpin had developed a deadly jig he called a “Luther Lure,” and he was pure poison on smallmouth bass.
Of course he was masterful on other species as well, among them largemouth bass, especially when they were schooling and chasing bait on the surface; the lunker trout that hang out in the lake’s depths; and even bluegills.
Yet Luther had an angling passion which, in large measure, he kept secret. He was a plain fool about walleye. Like a lot of mountain folks, he often referred to the fish and “walleyed pike.”
Although they share sharp teeth reminiscent of northern pike, walleye are a distinct and separate species, members of the perch, not the pike, family. But if you hear someone in the southwestern part of North Carolina talk about walleyed pike, rest assured it’s walleye they have in mind.
“I really do like fishing for ’em,” Turpin once said.
He explained why that was the case and offered a bit of insight as to why he didn’t do as much guiding for walleyes as for other species.
“There ain’t nothing as good to eat,” he said, “unless possibly it’s a fresh-caught mess of speckled trout cooked at streamside with some taters and a bait of kilt ramps and branch lettuce.”
For the uninitiated, “kilt” means pouring hot bacon grease over ramps, a pungent wild leek that can redefine halitosis, and the wild saxifrage mountain folks often called “lettuce.”
Turpin reckoned walleye made such fine shore-lunch fixins or table fare they were mighty hard to share. In true make-do-with-what you-have mountain fashion, he delighted in eating what he caught — at least when it came to walleye.
That perspective didn’t really come as much of a surprise to the greedy gut of a sporting scribe, since properly-prepared walleye fillets open the gates to culinary heaven. But what was unexpected were Turpin’s thoughts on the catching, as opposed to the eating, of walleyes.
“They flat-out ain’t easy to catch,” he said. “You’ve got to know where to find them, and that’s just getting started.
“It takes a fine touch and sure hand to tell when they take the bait and the same holds true when it comes to setting the hook.”
Turpin admitted that walleye, once hooked, weren’t exactly the sportiest fish.
“They put up about the same fight as a wet dishrag,” he said, “but that doesn’t matter. Show me a man who can catch walleyes consistently, and I’ll show you a man who’s a real fisherman.”
That conversational thread, which came a decade or so ago in the mid-1990s, logically led to the matter of what techniques were most effective when it came to putting a mess of fish in the live well or on the stringer.
“The easiest time to catch a lot of walleye,” Turpin said, “is without any doubt when they run in the spring.”
In Fontana, as is true of other mountain reservoirs where the species is found in goodly numbers, the fish make annual spawning runs in the early spring. Interestingly, Turpin and another old-time mountain fisherman who specializes in walleye, Roy Wilson, shared a similar thought in this regard. They associated spawning runs with the first hints of greening-up time in the mountains — swelling buds on pussy willows, the first hints of white on service trees, bloodroot peeking through the leaves and dogwood buds beginning to loosen after holding tight against winter’s cold.
Or, to simplify matters a bit, just follow the thoughts of Wilson, who, in the many years he owned and operated Blue Board Lodge at Lake Santeetlah in Graham County, spent about as much time fishing that reservoir as Turpin did casting in Fontana’s waters.
“Just when the walleye move up into the creek channels will vary a little bit from one spring to the next,” he said, “but you can pretty well count on fine fishing sometime during the month of March.”
The jury is still out on just how effectively walleyes reproduce naturally in mountain reservoirs, and there’s no question the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission’s stocking program for them has been of vital importance.
Whatever the degree of reproduction though, walleyes are going to follow nature’s ageless impulse and give procreation a try. When that happens, they move into shallow water, as opposed to the depths of 30 feet or more where they are found much of the rest of the year, and are easier to reach in terms of lure or bait presentation as well as more concentrated.
Turpin’s thoughts in that regard were humorous, but they also exemplified good, solid common sense.
“Most of the year you’ve got ‘em scattered all over the lake,” he said, “and unless a man knows what he’s doing, he likely can’t find them.
“But every fool and his brother know where they are in the early spring.”
In his home waters of Fontana Lake, that meant fish concentrated in or near the inflow from the reservoir’s three biggest feeders, the Nantahala, Tuckasegee, and Little Tennessee Rivers.
For some reason the latter stream has always seemed to have the greatest appeal, and as a result anglers can pretty well count on seeing plenty of boats and even bank fishermen in the area of the T. A. Sandlin Bridge or further upstream at the Little Tennessee arm of the lake (the exact area of focus can vary appreciably depending on the lake’s level, although that’s more stable, thanks to agreements with the Tennessee Valley Authority, than was once the case).
Destinations
Pretty much the same scenario holds for walleye wherever one finds them in the mountains.
Focus on the arms of a given lake where its major feeders enter and anglers will be in springtime walleye territory. There are a number of fine walleye fisheries, with most (though not all) of them being located in the far southwestern part of the state.
Among the best are Santeetlah (Graham County) and Fontana (Swain and Graham Counties), Glenville Lake (sometimes called Thorpe, in Jackson County), Bear Lake (Jackson County), Nantahala Lake (sometimes called Aquone, in Macon County), Hiwassee Lake (Cherokee County) and Lake Chatuge (Clay County). The current state record, a 13-pounds, 8 ounces lunker that would be a truly impressive fish anywhere the species swims, came from Chatuge.
Elsewhere in the state good walleye populations exist in Lake James McDowell/Burke Counties). One piedmont reservoir, Lake Gaston, also has a smattering of walleyes.
Tactics
Study reservoir maps for the lakes, locate convenient launch areas, and you are well along the way to springtime success.
Of course it never hurts to garner a little local knowledge to find out where the action is hot, but the fact the fish will be concentrated in headwaters where major feeders come in means a great deal.
As Turpin’s pithy comments above suggest, it’s a time when walleye are as close to being easy to locate as they ever come.
There’s no one set technique for talking walleye. Most of the year anglers have to get lures or baits deep, and that usually means jigging (often under lights) or possibly slow, deep trolling.
In the spring though, a strikingly different approach which is standard operating procedure in the famed Canadian walleye fisheries can be quite productive. This involves trolling with a relatively shallow-running lure such as a Shad-Rap (yellow or chartreuse) and getting as close to where still water turns to current as is possible.
A few enterprising anglers even use canoes, since they’ll go where other boats cannot. Casting and retrieving lures can also work from shore.
The hope is the lure is “amongst them,” as a good fishing buddy from Graham Country, Marty Maxwell, once put it. The lure’s movement seems to help trigger strikes.
Nonetheless, most walleye fishing during the spawning run comes pretty close to standard operating procedure at other times of the year. This means vertical fishing with any of a number of tried-and-true offerings.
Among them are hair jigs.
In that regard, Turpin confided that one of his breakthroughs as a walleye fisherman came with what he called a “fly” (it was actually a hair jig he tied) he used to catch smallmouth.
He began picking up walleye with some regularity and, after adjusting his presentation some, realized he was on to something.
Many anglers like to tip a hair jig with a night crawler or a minnow, and it seems reasonable to conclude, as many insist is the case, that with such offerings fish hold on a bit longer and delicate takes are perhaps a bit more discernable.
Various types of attention attractors, such as glass beads or tiny propellers, also can work, as can smallish Hopkins spoons, ice jigs, and more.
On a personal note, the biggest Fontana Lake walleye I landed smacked an offbeat lure (I never knew the name) featuring pieces of bright orange rubber affixed to a long-shanked treble hook.
Walleyes have a pronounced preference for rocks, gravel, or sandy bottoms, and when making their spawning runs they often will group in large numbers just below shoals (or areas that become shoals when lake levels drop).
It’s always important to get a lure or bait deep, and a jig with enough weight to get to the bottom quickly or use of enough lead for bottom bouncing in moving water will definitely help the “get-more-strikes” cause.
One approach that doesn’t get much play, and for that matter anglers won’t hear mountain anglers mention it a lot, involves using two natural baits which aren’t readily available — spring lizards (salamanders) and crayfish.
If anglers can get either of these critters, they may well give an advantage in comparison to more standard offerings. Incidentally, it’s worth keeping in mind that there’ll be competition when the spawning runs peak because the word gets out and lots of fishermen want in on the action.
It may not be quite as bad as the opening day of trout season scenario, where as an old-timer put it, “some places you need to tote your own rock if you want a place to stand,” but there will be plenty of boats in the water, especially on weekends.
When it comes to competition from other anglers, it’s helpful to keep in mind that walleye are quite sensitive to light. During their spawning runs they seem to feed most aggressively when the weather is flat-out rotten, and of course that’s precisely the time when fair-weather or couch-potato anglers decide to stay at home.
An overcast or rainy day, or even one with blowing March snow, can be magic provided one is dressed for the occasion and doesn’t mind a runny nose and tingling fingertips.
Also, keep in mind the fact that walleyes have pronounced schooling tendencies. This isn’t as important at the height of the spawning run, since they’ll come anyway.
The males arrive first and the actual spawning usually occurs at night. But in pre-spawn and post-spawn situations, as well as at other times of the year, catching one walleye pretty much guarantees there are others nearby at the same depth. In that regard, incidentally, first-rate fish-finder electronics can be a real asset.
When everything goes right and anglers hit things at the peak of spawning activity, catching the daily limit of eight walleyes can happen in an hour or two. The next day, though, it might appear the fish suddenly remembered urgent business at the other end of the lake.
That’s the nature of fishing for walleyes, but when things go right, anglers can experience March magic and eating of the sort guaranteed to bring tears of pure joy to the eyes of a mountain boy.
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