Can walleye see in really muddy water?

The tapetum is a dim-light amplifier, not an X-ray: it needs some photons to double, so in genuinely turbid water the walleye's visual range shrinks to a short radius just like everyone else's. Two things follow. First, dirty water flattens the day — with light knocked down everywhere, walleye often feed through midday instead of waiting for dusk, which is why stained rivers and windswept basins can produce all day. Second, presentations should get louder and slower: more vibration and thump for the lateral line to find, brighter or glow finishes, and tighter passes because a fish will not travel far for what it can barely sense. In heavy mud, walleye fishing gets tough for the same reason perch fishing does — the predator's edge is dimness, not blindness.

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