By Louie Stout

Walleye Numbers Impressive at Indiana’s Lake of the Woods Walleye Numbers Impressive at Indiana’s Lake of the Woods

If you’re a walleye angler and haven’t fished Lake of the Woods near Bremen, Ind., you should.

The lake has a good population of keeper-size walleyes, according to Indiana District Fisheries Biologist Tom Bacula.

Bacula was there last fall doing a standard evaluation of the walleye population.

“It’s something we do every year to check the stocking success of that season,” he said. “We didn’t stock last year (because of covid) but we wanted to see how the lake was doing.”

And doing quite fine, he added.

“Oh, man, we found a lot of walleyes,” he said. “And a lot of legal ones, too.”

In fact, 46 percent of the fish the shock boat rolled up were between 14 and 16 inches long. Another 20 percent were 16 and 17 inches.

He saw walleyes up to 23 inches long.

“Those are really high numbers for any lake,” Bacula said.

He says the 416-acre lake supports a good walleye population because it has fairly good habitat, baitfish and good water temperature range.

Shad, perch, shiners and bluegill help keep them well fed once they reach adult size.

The DNR stocks about 50 fingerlings per acre each year. And because the water tends to be a bit off color, they aren’t easily targeted by predators, hence better survival.

Lake of the Woods walleye hit about 12.5 inches by age 1, 14.6 inches when they are age 2 and around 16 inches as 3 year olds. The growth is consistent to what Indiana sees in other lakes.

As a side note, the shock boat also turned up quite a few largemouth bass as well.

“We saw more largemouth than we typically do during the fall survey,” he said. “The numbers aren’t super high, but we saw a lot of 12- to 15-inch fish, quite a few 2 pounders and some 3s and 4s.”