Heating Up. With a warm-up, walleyes will begin to enter a more summerlike pattern, requiring a bit less finesse. DEO Photo by Mike Peluso.

By Mike Peluso

Is summer finally here for our walleye fishing in North Dakota? We have gotten a couple warm days in a row and the water temperatures are climbing out of the 50s and hitting the 60s, which is actually still really cold for this time of year.

Since my return to Lake Sakakawea, things have been really up and down. We have managed to get our fish every day that we have been on the water, but that has come with a lot of work, grind, determination, and some modifications.

The exciting part is we are finally getting into more of a summerlike pattern here on Sakakawea, or at least I hope so. It would sure be nice to concentrate on a certain depth range.

What we are finding out here the past couple of weeks are lots of moving walleyes which are not overly active fish. I’ve really had to chase these fish down on the spots we are concentrating on. One minute you’ll find a couple biters in 15 feet of water, and literally the next pass they have moved out to 30 feet, which is absolutely crazy. When you catch them, however they have been quality!

My go to presentation has been really basic, using a plain slow death hook with a smaller than usual crawler chunk slowed way down, barely making it spin to get our bites. Earlier in the week, when the weather was still cold, we were using minnows as well. Hopefully this warmup is the end to those days. 

I don’t have much availability left for the summer, but you can still check in with me to see if I have a random day, but I have begun to book my fall Missouri River trips south of Bismarck starting in late September.

Mike Peluso is a Dakota Edge Outdoors contributing writer and a licensed ND fishing guide specializing in walleyes on the state’s premier waters.