How far do walleye actually migrate?

Farther than any bass angler would guess. Tagging and telemetry studies routinely document walleye moving 50–100 km (30–60 mi) between spawning sites and summer range, and in the biggest systems far more — Lake Erie's western-basin spawners are tracked migrating the length of the lake each summer, and river-system fish run comparable distances. Scale collapses with the waterbody: on a 500-hectare inland lake the same annual circuit might span 3 km (2 mi). The angling lesson is identical at every scale — walleye are somewhere different in May, July, and October, on purpose, and "where I caught them last trip" expires faster for this species than for almost any other you will fish.

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