When I was out checking on the activity on the March 1st opening of several lakes in the region, I made it all the way up to the Coulee City Marina. The reason was that with the very unusual weather we’ve experienced in the region there could be people already looking for walleye on Banks Lake. Sure enough, there were several trucks and trailers parked here, and I saw one boat as it was just leaving the marina. You may recall that I posted the Walleye Fishing Prospects graphs from the netting surveys conducted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife on Banks Lake and Potholes Reservoir last fall. The results of this survey on Banks has some interesting aspects to it. Although the overall abundance of walleye in Banks is down just slightly from the survey done in 2022, the abundance of certain sizes of walleye was up. The number of walleye in the 16- to 20-inch class made up almost 40 percent of the population of walleye and there will be more walleye of 20 to 24 inches (which most anglers release) that in the previous survey as well.