Fisherman has one thing on his mind: catching Kansas walleyes

When Jim Perry pulled his boat onto a point on Melvern Lake, it immediately brought back memories of the day he became a walleye fisherman.

“This is where I caught my first walleye some 20 years ago,” said Perry, 52, of Lansing, Kan. “I caught two fish that were 23, 24 inches and that was it.

“I was hooked on this walleye fishing.”

Many years — and many dollars — later, not much has changed. Perry still is obsessed with Kansas walleyes.

He has the latest in electronic fish finders, a GPS unit filled with dozens of waypoints, tackle boxes full of crankbaits, live-bait containers, and any other tool of the trade you could think of.

Yeah, this guy is into Kansas gold.

He dreams of dropoff, rock piles, road beds and humps — places where walleyes live.

“I will have 75 waypoints on my GPS unit at each reservoir,” he said. “They’re places where I’ve caught ’em before, or a buddy told me about or that I’ve just found on my own.

“With all these electronics today, there aren’t too many secrets. I can find Joe Blow’s rock pile pretty easily.”

Ah, but getting the walleyes that live there to hit, that’s the challenge.

That’s the puzzle Perry was trying to solve on a recent trip to Melvern during the Outdoor Writers of Kansas spring conference.

He followed a path on his GPS leading to a dropoff, then dropped a chartreuse jig head baited with a night crawler to the bottom. As he slowly worked the edge of the break, his line suddenly grew heavy. He set the hook and felt the dogged tug of a walleye.

He reeled the 16-inch fish to the surface, then lifted it into the boat. He released his catch, then dropped his bait back to the bottom.

It wasn’t long before he had another walleye in the boat. And then another.

By the time we were done, he and I had caught and released 12 walleyes and one big sauger. None of them was the huge fish Perry was looking for, but those don’t come along every day.

Still, Perry knows that catching a trophy walleye in Kansas isn’t an unrealistic goal. He caught an 8-pound fish several years ago at Milford Lake. And he has landed many fish 5 pounds or bigger.

“May is hands-down the best month to catch ’em,” Perry said. “The walleyes have recovered from the spawn and they have the feed bags on.

“You can get up on a mud flat at a lot of these reservoirs and drift with a jig and crawler or troll with a crankbaits and you can catch walleyes.

Where? Perry lists Milford, El Dorado, Wilson, Marion, Melvern and Hillsdale as good possibilities. The bite has been erratic this year because of all the rain and high water. But once the reservoirs return to normal, Perry is confident the fish will bite.

“We have some excellent walleye fishing in Kansas,” he said. “Every once in a while, someone will come up to me and say, ‘I caught a bigger walleye in Kansas than I ever have in Canada.’

“We don’t have the numbers that lakes up north do, but we have the quality.”

This story was originally published May 30, 2015 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Fisherman has one thing on his mind: catching Kansas walleyes."