Walleye run: Chasing Long Lake’s toothy and tasty predators

Your first walleye shouldn’t be huge.

That’s not to say it should be small. It should put up a decent fight and be worth taking home. It just shouldn’t be big enough to inspire unreasonable expectations.

You should probably also catch it when you’re young, in those blissful years before you understand the inner workings of a mortgage.

My first walleye broke both of these rules. I caught it on Long Lake on a recent Wednesday as a 32-year-old with a general understanding of amortization schedules.

And the fish was … well, big. Embarrassingly so.

Twenty-seven inches, weighing something like 8 pounds, it made two strong runs before tiring out. When Josh Mills scooped it up with the net, he said what we were both thinking: Are you kidding me?

Not a bad start to the best kind of grocery run.

Mills, a devoted fly-fisher who spends more time than he should watching steelhead dam counts, is also a serious lover of the spiny ray – bass, crappie and walleye. On a recent Tuesday, he asked me if I wanted to jump in a boat early the next morning for a half-day of walleye fishing. There’s never a good reason to turn down a fishing trip.

Walleye have a spectacular reputation as table fare. The only people who don’t like them appear to be those who simply don’t like fish. Even some of them probably make an exception for walleye. I once heard a story about someone trading freshly caught spring chinook salmon for a pile of walleye fillets. That’s crazy, given the relatively limited opportunities anglers have to put fresh salmon on the table, but some people just crave the walleye’s white meat.

The toothy piscivores aren’t supposed to be in Long Lake, also known as Lake Spokane. They’re native to the middle portion of North America. In the wrong places, they spell trouble for other fish species with their voracious and indiscriminate appetite. In Idaho, fisheries officials are concerned about walleye spreading in the Snake River drainage, where they can dine on salmon and steelhead.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has stocked walleye in some places in the past, but they’ve been spread more widely through illegal introductions. That’s almost certainly how they got into Long Lake, where they were first confirmed in 2001.

Spawning habitat exists in the lake, so walleye were able to establish themselves and become a self-sustaining population. They grow quickly thanks to an abundance of forage fish. Danny Garrett, a WDFW warmwater fish biologist, said the 27-incher I caught was likely six or seven years old. In a place like Lake Roosevelt, it might take a fish twice as long to grow that big.

Garrett said they have seen walleye as big as 31 inches, and they are seeing all ages of them.

“They’re definitely filling out,” Garrett said.

As a result, walleye have become a big draw at Long Lake, despite their dubious origins. For Spokane anglers like Mills, the lake has become the preferred local option for ’eyes.

We pulled up to the boat launch seven minutes before it opened and still weren’t the first boat in the water. After a short run to our first spot, Mills rigged a pair of spinning rods with heavy weights, blade baits and worm harnesses and turned on the trolling motor.

Trolling is simple fishing, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The trick is to get the weight to bounce on the bottom so that the worm hovers in the zone where the fish will see it. The rod tip twitches each time the weight ticks the bottom in a dull rhythm. When the rhythm is interrupted by a couple of staccato pulses or a big pull downward, it’s time to pick the rod up and see what’s there.

I was too late the first time I saw the rod move just right. I reeled up and found a half-eaten worm at the end of the line. We had three dozen worms, so I reloaded the hook and dropped it back in the water.

On the next lap, the rod moved weirdly again.

“That’s a fish,” Mills said.

A few minutes later, I was holding the giant walleye of my dreams.

For a good spell after that, I had the hot rod. There were no more truly big walleye, but plenty of “eaters” and a nice smallmouth bass. When we changed spots, Mills started catching more fish.

We didn’t limit out, but we were piling up enough fish that talk soon turned to recipes. Mills’ preferred method: egg wash, ground Dot’s Pretzels and coconut oil.

I never quite figured out how to spot an eat by watching the rod tip, though. Any irregularity in the rod tip’s movement made me pick it up and start reeling. Most of the time, the only thing on the end of the line was a perfectly intact worm.

Mills made fun of me every time that happened. I deserved it. I was so spoiled by the first fish that every slight bump in the rod tip seemed like it had to be another monster.

Near the end of the day, I picked up the rod and felt an unusual amount of weight on the other end. I was certain it was another monster, at least 20 inches.

“This is going to be a good one,” I said.

Mills grabbed the net and was ready to scoop when we finally saw what was on the end of the line: a big ball of weeds.