Why do walleye have boom and bust year-classes?
Because with no parental care, an entire lake's reproduction rides on two or three weeks of spring weather. Eggs incubate in the rubble for roughly two to three weeks, and everything must cooperate: a cold snap can stall hatching or kill embryos, a drop in river flow can dewater eggs, storms can smother them in silt, and the fry that do hatch must meet the zooplankton bloom on time or starve. When it all lines up, a "boom" year-class results that dominates the fishery for a decade; when it fails, that cohort is simply missing. Anglers feel this as multi-year waves — the flood of 35 cm (14 in) fish today is one good spring from years ago, and the gap behind it is a bad one. It is also why biologists index spring hatches the way farmers watch harvests.
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