ICE-OUT PYMATUNING WALLEYE
By Darl Black

The aluminum hull of the 16-foot Lund sliced through the dirty gray ice like a hot knife through soft butter. The trail behind us looked like a slush drink as mushy ice closed in around the outboard's exhaust bubbles.

"See, I told you there was nothing to worry about," touted Dave Hornstein, a longtime fishing buddy who was at the throttle of the outboard. "All we have to do is break through about 50 yards of this rotten ice to reach open water. With this hot sun in the blue sky, most ice on the lake will melt in the next few hours."

Five minutes after reaching the open water and locating the proper depth, we had the first walleye on the line. Two more fish followed quickly. When I looked up lake, the ice sheet had disappeared just as Dave had figured.

PA's Most Popular Walleye Lake

By the time the main force of anglers arrive at Pymatuning in late April, a vanguard of hardcore walleye hunters have already been fishing the lake for several weeks. Ice-out typically occurs sometime between March 10 and March 20. The first day that a ramp is ice free, there will be anglers launching a boat."Ice-out fishing pressure has been increasing in recent years," says Hornstein. "Years ago there were a dozen or so regulars who hit the lake as soon as the ice disappeared. Quite often I would be the only boat on the water for several days. Today, I may find myself waiting in line at the ramp. Still, the walleyes seem to be holding their own. There's a lot of room and a lot of fish."

"The majority of walleyes harvested by anglers at Pymatuning are barely 15 inches in length," notes Hornstein, who imposes his own personal 15-1/2 inch minimum size so the local WCO never has any question about whether his fish are legal when checked. "There are a lot of fish taken, but few of quality size. Later in the spring, you may catch 20 to 30 sub-legal walleyes for every legal fish. However, in the ice-out period, the percentage of legal fish is about 50/50."

In part, the trick to slightly better quality fish is to put a bait in front of walleyes while they are still in deep water. Once the fish move shallow for the spawn, small males become the most aggressive feeders and therefore are the ones most frequently caught. In addition, the increased number of anglers on the water in late spring greatly narrows the chances of an individual angler catching a legal walleye.

Location and Technique

Hornstein instructed me some years in early spring walleye location and techniques. His approach to ice-out walleye fishing at Pymatuning is as effective today as it was back then.

Actually, to understand the early spring walleye fishing, it's best to return to late fall fishing. Hornstein will be one of the last walleye anglers on the open waters of Pymatuning before ice-up. At that time, most walleyes are located on the channel edge drop off or adjacent deepwater flats in 18 to 25 feet of water. That's the place where Hornstein begins looking for fish at ice-out.

"Now, don't misunderstand, the deep flats are not the only place to find walleyes right at ice-out," explains Dave. "Some fish have already moved shallower. I know individuals who wade the north end of the lake with some success. Other anglers line the stone wall at the Linesville Spillway at ice-out to catch walleyes which move into the current coming under the bridge from the Sanctuary. Still, my approach is the way I like to fish, and I think it produces more walleyes."

With a lifetime of walleye fishing on the lake, Dave has many spots to choose from at ice-out. Yet, each site has several factors in common. First, water depth will be at least 20 feet. Second, there will be wood cover - primarily old stumps, although some sites may have man-made cribs or brushpiles. Third, the most productive areas are deepwater flats, as opposed to a hump or sloping structure.

Hornstein's primary tactic is to slowly drift across the flats with a minnow on a jighead. "The deeper walleye schools do not appear to be tightly grouped at this time of year," says Hornstein. "Basically, they are in transition, on the way to shallower water. In addition, there is not a lot of aggressive feeding taking place. You can't anchor and catch fish after fish like later in the spring. Considering these factors, the best approach is drifting in order to cover a lot of territory."

On days with a light breeze, the trolling motor is used intermittently to maintain a particular direction across the flat. With a stronger breeze, constant running of the trolling motor into the wind helps to slow the boat in order to fish the jig at a speed which walleyes are willing to attack. Drift socks may also be used to slow the boat.

"Dead calm days are the toughest ones for catching walleyes at ice out," warns Hornstein. If the boat is not moving, then the bait is not being seen by enough walleyes. Trolling with the electric motor on a calm day does not seem to generate as many strikes as drifting on a breezy day, so there has to be something about the waves which activates the fish, too."

Hornstein prefers a light to moderate chop - enough breeze to move the boat, but not so strong that it pulls the jig way off the bottom. What's too strong a breeze? If the trolling motor set at a moderate speed cannot hold the boat stationery, then the wind has reached the upper limit of effective fishing.

The Bait

Hornstein's choice of lure presentation is simple; he uses a plain ballhead jig tipped with a fathead minnow. When the walleyes move shallow, Dave becomes a proponent of using different colored soft plastic bodies on the jighead in addition to the minnow. He insists finding the color that is most visible under the given sunlight and water conditions will increase the catch rate. However, in the immediate ice-out period, Hornstein is just as convinced that dressing the leadhead with colorful plastic makes little difference.

"I catch just as many walleyes on a plain leadhead with a minnow as I do when I add a soft plastic grub," points out Hornstein. "In the deep, murky ice-out water, I'm not sure that color plays much of a part in walleye finding the bait. Besides, dragging a jig through a mine field of stumps under breezy conditions results in a lot of snags. Many jigs are lost. Grub bodies only add to the expense when I hang something and can't dislodge the jig."

The weight of the jighead used is based on the speed of the drift. The jig should track the bottom, occasionally bumping but not constantly dragging. To achieve this, the weight of the jighead must be matched to the speed of the drift. A light jighead in a moderate breeze will ride too far above the bottom.

Typically a 1/4-ounce head is used in a light breeze, a 3/8-ounce head in a moderate breeze and a 1/2-ounce head in a heavy chop. His minnows are medium-size fatheads purchased at the local bait shop. Since his jig is a plain leadhead, Hornstein depends on fresh, lively minnows to play a major role in attracting fish. Minnows are hooked through both lips.

"I want the jig drifting on as short a line as possible," explains Hornstein. "With an extremely long line, strikes are not easily detected and snagging the bottom increases because you do not control the jig as well as on a shorter line. Ideally, the jig should be skimming less than a foot above the bottom. When I drop the rod tip back or strip off a little bit of line, the jig should touch bottom."

Hornstein uses two rods; one held in hand and the second one set against the boat's gunwale rather than in a rod holder. The rod held in the hand is pumped slowly, raised and lowered four to eight inches. On the static rod, the preferred angle of line coming off the rod tip is close to 90 degrees. The flatter the angle (that is closer to a 180 degrees) the further behind the boat the jig is riding and the greater the likelihood of a missing a fish or a snagging a stump.

"When a walleye starts to take a bait in cold water, you do not want to set the hook immediately," emphasizes Hornstein. "If a hit occurs on the static rod, I simply watch the tip dance until it begins to bow steadily. Then I pick the rod up and set the hook. With the hand-held rod, I'll drop the tip back to give the fish a little slack, count off several seconds, and then set the hook."

Mid Spring Options

Hornstein targets the deep water immediately after ice-out in March, and then moves to the shallower spawning areas sometime in April. When fishing the spawning points and humps, he continues to use a jig-and-minnow. However, the weight of the jighead is reduced to a 1/8 or 1/16-ounce in the shallow water.

Immediately after ice-out, some anglers can be found tossing Rapalas at sunset from key shoreline areas, and connecting with a few walleyes. Night fishing with floating minnow baits really picks up in April.

It's important to keep in mind that Pymatuning is a wide open, shallow lake. Once the ice disappears and there is
no late winter storm to set things back, the lake warms rapidly. Walleyes may move quickly from ice-out locations to spawn locations in a matter of days, so anglers must be aware of the possible changes in order to stay with the fish.

Through the spawn period it is still possible to catch walleyes on the deep flats. But in April, most fish on these flats are immature walleyes which did not move shallow to spawn. By early summer, the deep flats again produce keeper-size walleyes as the adult schools regroup for summer feeding.

If you can't wait until May to catch walleyes, Pymatuning is the lake to visit at ice-out and the deepwater flats may be the best place to fish.

PYMATUNING SPAWN

The peak walleye spawning attempt at Pymatuning takes place the last week in March. It must be referred to as a spawning attempt, since PFBC biologists suspect there is little successful natural reproduction taking place in the reservoir. Still, adult walleyes make a spawning run to firm-bottom, wind-swept points and humps with water depths from two to six feet. Many male walleyes will linger in the spawning sites until late April.

According to Craig Billingsley, PFBC Area Fisheries Manager, the Pymatuning walleye fishery is dependent on stocking. Stocking has been as high as 13 million fry annually in the last decade. However, Billingsley has discovered that by reducing the stocking to 2-1/2 million, the number of legal-sized walleye harvested remains the same.

"With those high stocking numbers, there were so many sub-legal walleyes in the lake that anglers complained the fish were slow growing, even though that is not what I have found," says Billingsley. "Reducing the stocking actually provides a smaller year class so anglers do not catch a ton of tiny walleyes, yet the number of fish reaching the 15-inch minimum size has remained the same."