The best fishing techniques vary throughout the year. Around Mother's Day the fish are very active. This year, a 4-year-class of walleyes that hit the 18-inch minimum last year should be very impressive. Since gizzard shad are the forage fish, anglers should attack areas with exposed trees by trolling jointed Shad Raps and jig-tipping with minnows.

And if you can stay out of the woods long enough to fish this fall, more big fish can be found on the lake by trolling. Plus, the lake is a ghost town at that time of the year. "If we have five or six boats a day in September and October walleye fishing, it's a busy day," said Davignon, who added one last thing to remember when at Cedar Bluff: "The key for any walleye angler at any reservoir is their depthfinder."

I'm as excited about Kansas' next lake, Cheney, as I am about any lake in this list. Why? Sheer logic. More than two miles of dam area is available to fish in the spring on this 9,500-acre lake. This is where most people congregate on the water, many fishing up to 25 feet deep with Rat-L-Traps and Rapalas.

"There's a lot of pressure on the lake," said Cheney State Park ranger Jake Hunninghake, who spoke of boats on that western end as far as a person could see.

What do a 21-inch minimum-length limit and a two-walleye daily limit tell me? That, with all those anglers and those limits, big fish swim that lake, and that walleye fans are willing to take home slightly fewer fish to have an opportunity at catching a lunker.

People troll more during the summer months, working off the rock points using shad-colored lures -- silver, gray, and white. On that end of the lake, the wind usually blows from the northwest directly into the dam, creating a whirlwind of baitfish for the walleyes and for the anglers who pile up to search for big fish.

NORTH DAKOTA
On looking at Devils Lake in North Dakota, finding and catching big fish is not the principal thought that comes to mind. I mean, people talk about that, of course, but the words "big lake" seem to roll off the tongue a bit more often these days -- because right now, the lake's at or near an all-time high.

Over the last decade and a half, the Devils Lake area of North Dakota has had very wet conditions that have caused the lake to triple its size. Now, the lake has increased to 145,000 acres, up from the 30,000 acres it was during the early 1990s.

At the top of the 2006 sampling data for both numbers of walleyes and walleyes between 20 and 25 inches is Merritt Reservoir.

Every year, new cover and structure make the lake vastly different from the year before. Newly flooded trees, weedbeds and roadbeds are at this lake, plus a long list of other cover possibilities. These roadbeds and driveways, for example, offer the perfect combination of hard, graveled surfaces surrounded by looser, soft surroundings.