You might not like weeds in your garden, your flower beds or your lawn. But when you find them in your lake, don’t pull them – fish ‘em!

Take Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, for instance. It’s fast earning the reputation as a walleye angler’s playground. If you like trolling, do it there. Jig fishing on rock? You bet. Still fishing with floats? That, too. Slip jigging rivers? There’s two for your jigging pleasure, the Wolf and the Fox.

But anglers in the know never overlook Winnebago’s weeds, a steady producer of walleyes if you know how to root them out. Try it there or on your home waters. The weed pattern is so great, it’s unbelievable.

The advantage of weeds? With other patterns, like mid-lake mud, they can here today, gone tomorrow. But weeds are consistent. If they are there one day, they will likely be there the next.

The setting

Winnebago once had a reputation for producing big walleyes. They migrate, sometimes as far as 90 miles, from the 135,000-acre main lake through the smaller companion lakes of Butte des Mortes, Winneconne and Pygon into the Wolf River and northward to marshes where they lay eggs amid flooded vegetation. They can’t do that during low water, so walleyes suffered several poor spawns in a row, causing a gap in year classes. The big fish that didn’t wind up in a live well were dying from old age.

When deciding how to fish at Winnebago, you can literally take out the textbook, turn to a page, try whatever method you find there and have success. When I first came to Lake Winnebago from Little Bay de Noc, I did what I knew from farther north – trolling bottom bouncers and spinner rigs. Others trolled crankbaits far out in the middle of the main lake over Winnebago’s large mud flats. Or they jigged rivers, cast jigs on rock or sandy shoreline or used slip-bobber rigs over rock reefs.

The action

But there are so many weed beds. Which one is the right one?

Simple. Look for weeds nearest the deepest water that have points, inside turns or breaks. Search for dingy water, especially in mostly clear-water lakes. Carp, believe it or not, are an excellent sign. They dirty the water so minnows become easy prey for the keen-sighted walleyes to gobble down.

Weeds are normally thought of a bass lover’s delight. Indeed, walleye fishermen can take a lesson from their bass counterparts on how to fish them. The weed technique for walleye resembles flipping for largemouth.

Use a 6-foot medium light spinning rod with a super fast tip. Dip a 1/16th- or 1/8th-ounce Fuzz-E-Grub with a leech or half a nightcrawler in pockets in the weeds. Since water is cloudy, the walleyes are not spooked by the electric motor. They are aggressive because they are there to fed so fishing just 3- to 4-feet from the boat is common; casts over 10 feet are rare.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking walleyes are only holding on outside weed edges. They are often deep inside the field. But when wind blows, it may bend the weeds over and close the holes. That’s when to concentrate on points and edges of the turns which remain accessible.

Tighten your drag all the way to improve hook sets and pull fish away from weeds fast. Otherwise, they tangle and yank free. The rod bend and the stretch of the monofilament will be enough to prevent line breaks.

In heavily pressured beds, try a small jigging spoon, using gold on cloudy days and silver in bright sunlight, to trigger a reaction bite.

If you toss your offering in a particular pocket, feel a bite and miss the fish, don’t hesitate to toss it back into the same spot.

Normally, you will catch the same fish every time. The fish are so wired up in there, it’s unbelievable. I had one on in Otter Street, an 181/2-incher, and it got off. And, they don’t know it was a hook that stuck them. It could have been the spine of a perch for all they know.

Candy in the cane

There are differences between the weeds, which are submerged over soft bottom, and fishing cane, which normally stands from 6 inches to 3 feet above the water and indicates a hard bottom below.

For one – an important one – experience shows the odds of catching bigger fish seem higher.

Use the same 1/8-ounce Fuzz-E-Grub around points and turns near deep water approaching them quietly from a distance with his trolling motor. Walleyes seem to spook easier in cane, perhaps because they have less cover around them than in weeds.

Instead of fishing inside the bed like in weeds, stay back about 10- to 15 feet from the cane, toss your jig to the edge, let it sink to the bottom and work it all the way back to the boat. Though most people think fish are concentrated on the edges, they are more likely to be cruising farther out, perhaps as much as 10 feet away.

When the wind blows, anchor and fish points and turns.

Don’t panic and give up if you don’t get a bite right away. Walleyes seem to move to the cane to gorge for brief periods. A half hour can be a frenzy. Be patient. Sometime during the day, they are going to come. And when they do, they are there to eat. They will hit anything that moves.

Jig rock? Sure. Troll mud flats? You bet. Fish the rivers? Yep! But if its consistency you want, weed and cane fields can be your field of dreams.

Incoming search terms:

• Lake winnebago weed beds