New Mexico Walleyes in Early Spring

New Mexico Fishing little walleye

The textbooks on walleye tell us that spawning occurs when the water temperatures reach the mid 40s. But, if you’ve been to Elephant Butte lately, you’ve been seeing water temps in the 50s. Does that mean all the walleyes have left the shallow water? Brian Stangel says, “not at all.”

Brian has years of experience as a guide in New Mexico; helping clients find walleye on Ute, Conchas, Abiquiu, and the Butte. Brian also maintains one of New Mexico’s best online resources: ABQ Sportfishing. So when I went looking for information to improve all of our early spring walleye fishing, he was my first stop.

So where should we be looking for walleyes in early spring? “If the water’s dead slick early in the morning, you’re going to find them skinny. If there’s even the slightest ripple on the water, they’ll stay skinny all day.”

But the water temps are in the 50s now, why haven’t all the fish spawned and moved to deep water? According to Brian, the fish don’t come with internal thermometers that New Mexico Fishing walleye shake tell them to spawn the instant the water hits 45 degrees. “The water temp has to go down through its winter cycle, bottom out, and then start trending back up. Once you start getting water temps in that area, then that’s an indication that you can start to look for spawning walleye. That process can continue for over a month depending on the group of fish that you’re on, or there can be different groups of fish that come through the same area.”

Ok, so the fish are shallow, but there is a lot of shallow water out there. What should we look for to narrow the search? “Your best places to fish are going to be the places you least want to fish, and that is wind blown shoreline with gravel to fist sized rock on it.” Brian prefers a clay bank for this tactic, working the mudline with jerk baits like these;
Smithwick Suspending Limited Rogue Hardbaits
Lucky Craft InShore Game Pointer 78 or 100 Lures
Lucky Craft Hardbaits – Staysee 90 SP.
As for colors, Brian prefers opaque baits like Lucky Craft’s Chartreuse Shad in the often stained waters we have here in New Mexico.

New Mexico Fishing walleye picture I put Brian’s advice to the test this weekend on my latest New Mexico fishing trip, and had some great results. As you can tell from the pictures on this page, my fish were mostly caught on grubs and creatures ( the creature was an Ozark Smoke colored
Yum Flavor-Enhanced Soft Baits – Wooly Hawgtail)on a 1/4oz jig head worked on, or very close to, the bottom. I was never deeper than 10 feet of water, and I even caught a few nice white bass and several blacks (both large and smallmouths) in the same areas. I guess it’s like Brian says, “If you’re fishing skinny water in the spring in New Mexico, you will trip into everything.”