Cold Snaps for Baiting Walleye
Walleye are a fascinating fish to admire. They complement the darkness in us. Only, they can see in it.
Figures From My Log
First, the article was originally published in the newsletter of New Jersey Federated Sportsmen’s Clubs. The material is evergreen. A good reason to think of the “newsletter” as more like a magazine.
If warm weather lingers into October, lakes such as Hopatcong will turnover later this fall than they used to. My handwritten fishing log offers at least some evidence that higher water temperatures are occasioning comparable dates. A chart will serve to show you some figures before I interpret what they mean for walleye fishing. Not all of my Lake Hopatcong trips during the fall are included, because temperature data for some is, unfortunately, inexact. I’ve never fished the lake nearly as often as some do with greater success than mine, but my admiration for Hopatcong’s mainstays reflects on my getting out whenever I can. And catching some fish, too.
Lake Hopatcong Fahrenheit Water Temps and Dates
The variables of the graph aren’t exactly aligned, but if you compare, for example, the 19th of October, 2008, with the 19th of 2021, you see a large gap, as you do when you compare October 25, 2009, with October 25, 2021. Temperatures were comparatively warmer in 2017 and 2018, at the end of October 2019, and in 2021 and 2022. I included October 3rd, 2023 and ’24; even though I logged nothing more that early besides October 1, 2011—when the water temp wasn’t as high. I think especially 2018 is interesting, not so much because my log shows an increase in water temperature, but because word on the lake was so strident. People felt affronted by a very warm October. Jimmy Welsh at Dow’s Boat Rentals told me last October 14, exasperation emphasizing his words, “The lake hasn’t turned over yet!”
All the way back to 2007—when I began catching fall walleye there—even in the third week of October the lake never had turned over thoroughly, with oxygen reestablished in the deepest depths of about 55 feet, but oxygen had always become present deeper than our purpose of setting live herring on the bottom edge of a favorite 33-foot drop-off required. We use ¾-ounce steel egg sinkers. (A barrel swivel and a four-foot leader with a size 6 plain shank hook completes a rig that allows the herring to freely swim in a more and less circular direction.) Even on October 1, 2011, Joe Landolfi and I marked a fish on the sonar graph at 30 feet. And on October 13, 2012, many hybrid striped bass got caught about 30 feet down. On October 12, 2016, I pulled a walleye an ounce under six pounds from water possibly 35 feet deep or more on a less familiar drop off.
Chilly, But Turnover Won’t Happen Overnight
The fall of 2018 was a different story. When Mark Licht and I weighted live herring and set them 30 feet down, we reeled them in dead only minutes later, because oxygen had not penetrated that deep. Turnover doesn’t happen overnight, and as it does happen, some spots will have oxygen reestablished deeper than other spots, depending especially on the effects of wind mixing cool temperatures that result in water dropping from the lake’s surface into the depths. (Cool water sinks as warmer water underneath rises, thus the lake turns over.)
Mark Licht hooks up where water drops off to 33 feet.
We did mark on the graph fish as deep as 31 feet that morning, but most we found suspending at 17. Catching walleye on herring set from 14 to 25 feet down, instead of the 33 feet I felt accustomed to, made me feel uncomfortably limited. But more than feeling frustration at warm water and no oxygen, and more than my discomfort with fishing shallower than I would have liked to, I felt aghast at the trees—almost as green as they had been in August. I had thought that when I got to Hopatcong—1000 feet above sea level compared to 81 feet here where I live in Bedminster—I would see plenty of color. No.
During the week before the planned outing, I paid attention to the weather, well aware of its unusual warmth, and I felt nervous about whether we could weight herring and catch any walleye. Jimmy Welsh at Dow’s Boat Rentals only confirmed my feeling when I arrived; I already knew there was trouble with warm water, but Mark Licht and I were fortunate, because a sudden cold front had arrived on October 11th. The 62, 63 degrees at the surface, despite being warm for October 14, were lower temperatures than the upper 60’s reported before the cold snap came.
A cold front with its bluebird skies isn’t the best weather for walleye fishing, but on more than one occasion fishing Lake Hopatcong in October with no clouds in the sky, I’ve caught them. Naturally, with brilliant sunlight on the water, I want to place my herring as deep as possible. When Mark and I arrived before first light several days after the weather got cooler, clouds overhead held better promise than sun, and we welcomed a temperature of 40 degrees. Later in the day, it never rose out of the low 50’s.
Catching Fish
We caught three walleye, some largemouths, and some panfish. The numerous fish we marked on the graph were almost certainly hybrid striped bass. I mark schools of fish like that every time out in October and have pulled hybrids out of them. Having fished Hopatcong in the fall for more than a decade, walleye have proven a little more dependable, although my guests and I never have caught more than four of them during an outing. But they’re good size, averaging close to four pounds, and I always feel the effort is worth the catch.
Hybrids I find relatively fickle, although other anglers have made amazing catches of dozens of them on a single outing. On one occasion, October 22, 2011, my son and I did catch 17 of them as large as four pounds, four ounces. We’ve caught a lot on other outings, too, including as many as 10 of them up to almost six pounds when trolling in May, but we usually catch one or two, if any. Even when we see them on the graph directly under the boat, they don’t eagerly hit a live herring or anything else we try, including chicken livers and various lures.
Mark Licht and one of three walleye we caught in 2018.
Go When You Can
At least in my own experience, I can’t get out on the drop of a hat to take advantage of the best weather for fishing. I plan and hope the weather is favorable. But I think whatever the weather, it’s worth paying keen attention to it, because the narrative of your fishing will reflect it. I feel fortunate the water temperature had fallen seven or eight degrees when Mark and I got out, turnover having worked cooler water into fair depths within a matter of three days. That will always be a part of the story of 2018, a year I had to plan on fishing Hopatcong a week earlier than I would have liked to.
If you can choose when to go on short notice, be assured that fall is fall, and water will eventually get chilly enough to fish the drop offs. Besides, cold snaps, when temperatures get down as low as the 30’s mid-month or even upper 20’s near October’s end, seem inevitable. And as the season hardens into winter, ice will cover the lake. Maybe not every year, but it will happen for many more to come, no matter my wife’s humoring me about my increasing collection of ice fishing gear, as if there will be no ice to fish through. You don’t form a sensibility about seasonal changes by listening to what the media tells you; you get out in the weather time and again, and taking note enables you to draw sure inferences. We’ll see if the warming trend continues over the next decade.