The Fishin' Magician: Walleye with Rick Novegno

I had a great day of walleye fishing on Lake Roosevelt recently. I fished with Rick Novegno, of Big Wally's Guide Service and his son Hayden out of Two Rivers. We were breaking ice in the marina on way out, but the main lake was clear. We didn't have to run far to find fish, just down lake from the marina.

We were fishing glo jigs, without a skirt and tipped with a worm in close to 50 feet of water on one of his favorite ridges. We were either jigging very slowly or "dead sticking" our jigs and this technique put several walleye in the boat.

We then ran up into the Spokane River, just a short distance above the marina. Here we used the same method to boat even more walleye in water that was 35 to 50 feet deep. We made one more run down to the ridge in the main lake before calling it quits. We fished from about 9:30 till 2:30 and when we emptied the live well there were 17 walleye in it. The fish ranged in size from 12 to 17 inches. That's a lot of great eating!

Fishing was great and will get even better up here this spring.