I rarely use a jig heavier than a half-ounce. A 5/16-ounce lead-head seems to be the ideal weight. I don’t use live bait for walleyes in the Mississippi either. Instead, I turn to 3-inch plastic K-grubs in the spring, cranks when waters warm after spawning, and bigger K-grubs and 4-inch ringworms behind 1/4- or 3/16-ounce lead-heads or blade baits in the fall.

Throughout most of the year, I seldom fish deeper than 15 feet, although I sometimes will go much deeper when vertically jigging blade baits in the fall. From post-spawn until hot weather, some wing dams hold a lot of fish, but side channels do too. And you’ll find more walleyes back in side channels and running sloughs than the main river throughout most of the summer months.

My best day of walleye fishing ever was two years ago on pool 9 when two clients and I boated more than 200 walleyes on an eight-hour trip.

My worst day of walleye fishing ever was down on pool 13 in 1967. The biggest walleye of my life at that point -- a 28-incher -- was dragging behind the boat below the Bellevue dam on a long cord stringer. It was the only walleye I hooked that warm spring day.

When it came time to go home I pulled in the stringer and discovered that something -- I’m still convinced it was a great white shark -- had cut my big walleye in half, leaving just the head and a few inches of body on the stringer.

It had to be a great white, not the prop of my little 6-horsepower Evinrude as my fishing partner claimed. Either way, the event left me scarred for life -- and forever in search of the elusive, myopic manitou that we know as the walleye.