SHUT DOWN
I cut away about 10 feet of line from the lure, sharpened the hooks on that Wiggle Wart, checked all of the other hooks on the client's lures and drifted back down the river to make another run.

This pass produced only one hit that failed to hook a fish, and my sonar screen showed only a couple of other fish at the 15-foot depth where on the run before, we had seen several. We ran back down to set in for another pass, and I moved the boat out into 18 feet of water.

This pass, we let out 140 feet of line and almost immediately had a double hookup. Yes, 20 feet more line can make all the difference in the number of fish caught.

At that depth, we picked up four more fish before those fish quit the bite. The fish were still showing on the sonar screen and on my paper burner, but they suddenly didn't like the lures we were using, or else they just went off the bite. Walleyes do that, you know.

I decided it was time to alter the speed on the trolling motor. Going from a slow idling speed in stages up to about 2,000 rpms can make all the difference in the world. But at that point, trolling speed seemed to make no difference.

I started going through the tackle boxes, exchanging lures for favorites that had a lot of teeth marks on their little butts. But nothing seemed to work.

Right here, let me interject a little basic walleye lore. One of the perplexing problems of fishing for walleye is that sometimes, and for no apparent reason, those marble-eyes will just stop feeding.

Three basic natural factors can cause walleye to stop biting:
• Low barometric pressures,
• Too much light, and
• Too much noise.

But that day, there'd been no drop in barometric pressure to cause those fish to shut their mouths. The storm front was well past us.

The normal mid-Columbia wind was flat-out howling, and there were plenty of wind-kicked waves to disperse the sunlight, so too much light wasn't the problem.

Those fish weren't headed to deeper water or a basalt shelf to get shade for their eyes. And at the depths we were fishing, noise was not a contributing factor.

Those fish just quit feeding.

My 35 years of experience in walleye fishing and guiding tells me that catching walleyes is limited to those times that the fish are on the cusp of starting to feed, feeding or on the cusp of going off the feed.

Walleyes can readily be caught at those times, but can be almost impossible to catch at any other times.

I have little faith in the concept that they can be triggered into biting at any time of the day or night, week or month. I have discussed -- and cussed -- this concept with a couple of well-known walleye experts over the past three decades. I've listened to their seminars at sports shows, and they've yet to convince me they can catch walleyes any time they want to.

Sure, it's possible to catch one walleye just about any time. A couple of years ago, someone caught a couple of marlin off the coast of Oregon. But that was a fluke, too. If they could catch walleyes at their whim, I wouldn't see them fishing the Columbia every day over a two- or three-week period to produce just a 45-minute video for their marketing projects!

CUT THROUGH THE BULL
Lets discuss methods for catching walleyes on the Columbia River, and most other places I've fished, during the early-summer period of June and July.

First is the Columbia standard of trolling crankbaits upriver. I want to stress the "upriver" part of that, even though I know the universal system for catching walleyes is to troll downstream. True, when you fish the Columbia River, you're fishing impoundments -- but these impoundments have flow of a moving current. And for that reason, the Columbia is justly infamous for eating lures and tackle. Anything that hangs on the bottom stays there, held down by pressure from the current.