Minnesota's walleye opener falls on Saturday, 9 May 2026, and the Northland Fishing Tackle pro staff are calling it a cold-water, shallow-bite year. Across Leech Lake, Lake Mille Lacs, the Twin Ports, the Brainerd chain and Gull Lake, the consensus from the guides is the same: skinny water, jig and minnow, and a long, careful look at the boat ramp before the trailer goes in.
Dusty Minky, fishing out of northern Minnesota, said the spawn is finally moving. "We're seeing water temps in the mid-50s. A few days ago, things were still really cool," he reported from Leech Lake. "Word on the street was the spawn was behind. Maybe getting spot-tail shiners was going to be tough, but I've had a few reports now that some bait shops are seeing spot tails."
Minky's first move on opener will be the Narrows, the corridor between Walker Bay and the bigger water out by Goose Island Flats and Trader Bay. "I kind of like to start in this area because it's got shallow, warm water. It seems to be the first place to really kind of kick off in the lake when you're looking for numbers of fish," he said.
His tackle is heavily Northland-leaning — quarter-ounce stand-up tungsten Smeltinator heads in the smaller profile that "actually looks like an eighth ounce", a 3/16-ounce round-ball tungsten for double-hooking shiners through the gill, and the new Eye Candy Shiner soft plastic for the days when bait shops run out of spot tails. "It's got a cool little kick-tail that never stops," Minky said.
"We're going to start off with a jig and a minnow," Houston said. "I got about 40 souls in there. And I'm going to need lots of volunteers tomorrow because a lot of our walleye are that cold-water, shallow-spawning type, post-spawn type fish. They're going to be hungry, ready to bounce back."
His read of the conditions is the bluntest of the bunch. "We're going to fish skinny water, shallow water, dark water. We're going to like structure. We're going to hard substrate, sand, rocks. Again, shallow, shallow, shallow. Can't get shallow enough. Use your electronics, find them, and fish them."
Houston's go-to is a Northland stand-up tungsten jig. "I like it when it stands up. That's where they don't get snagged. Walleye like that. The minnow will be on there. I'll be standing up going and that's when they're going to bite hard."
Brad Hawthorne is on Lake Mille Lacs and is more worried about the boat ramp than the bite. "We had really low water last fall which had a lot of the accesses really shallow," he warned. "So check out those accesses before you go dumping your boat off the trailer and then you find out when it's too late. So with that, we had some rain and that did bring water levels up, but still give that resort a call."
Hawthorne's water-temperature reading nine days out from opener was 44 to 45 degrees. His call: skip the deep water entirely. "When you're staring at your electronics with cool water years, look shallower first before you go looking deep. So eliminate all that deep water, all that stuff 16, 18 feet and deeper. You can catch fish out there, sure. But the concentrations of fish are going to be under that and even more so under that 10, 12 feet, 6 feet, 4 feet."
Hayes Baldwin from team Northland Tackle will be running Gull Lake and Pelican in the Brainerd Lakes area, fishing midnight on the dot. He has settled on three rigs.
The first is a sixteenth or eighth-ounce long-shank tungsten stand-up jig pitched on 8-pound braid to an 8-pound fluorocarbon leader, throwing on shallow sand and gravel. The second is a quarter-ounce short-shank version stepped up to 10-pound braid and leader for current edges, weeds and slightly deeper water — and Baldwin is targeting one specific drainage on Gull Lake.
"A lot of the walleye are just finishing up spawning. So on Gull Lake specifically we'll be focused on the north end, looking at where that water's draining out of the lake and pitching that around," he said.
His third rig is a slip-bobber set-up with a long-shank tungsten jig and a quarter-ounce cylinder weight up top. "This is good for schools of fish to dump bobbers on them," he said. "I expect the fish to be on shallow sand and gravel flats, emerging weed beds, if you can find good cabbage coming up. The night bite, you should be able to pick up a few fish trolling stick baits — Northland Rumble Shads are a good bait to troll as well in that 8 to 12-foot zone."
Boat-ramp etiquette closed out the round-up. "Opener can be a real whirlwind. There's going to be a lot of people out there. So always be courteous at the boat ramp because there's going to be a lot of people with very inexperience out there. Help someone out at the ramp if you can," the host said. Find them with side imaging, work them with paddle tails, finish them on a stand-up jig — and good luck on a long Saturday.