Rowly - That's great news. Good thing you live so close to the fishing grounds. I see no reason why the river walleyes will not adapt well to your pond situation. You mentioned something in an earlier post about river vs lake walleye but I see no problem with the river type fish in your pond esp for predation purposes. Back in the 80's I carefully moved some river walleye into my old pond and they did fine. If the law allows keep even some smaller walleye than 13" but you prob. will not get many of these since they are too small for the spawn run. 16"ers are also okay if you don't want to eat them. However they will be harder to transport. I would not transplant fish bigger than 17-18". The smaller wallery are the ones you want for eating those small perch/bgill. Be careful not to keep fish too long in your containers and donot crowd them for very long, colder air and water temps help here because colder water holds more oxygen. Important note, just because a fish swims away when released DOES NOT mean he will live. Many have latent death due to poor handling, crowding and the stress. Most often these do not float. Future fishing will tell the tale. You are much better off moving fewer fish on each trip than crowding more fish and them later dying.
River walleye are used to appropriate sized forage and will be happy among those small perch, rockbass & bgill. You can try stripping & fertilizing some eggs. Deposit them as planned and cross your fingers.
I doubt you will catch many in Feb. a few residents or some very early jacks. Mar 1 to 14 may get you a few but prob not any females ready to strip eggs. Take a smaller female home let her spawn naturally. They will do a better job spawning than your hand mixing anyway. If not this year then they will spawn next. During our walleye run some hatcheries get eggs/milt from the catches of fishermen. The river walleye run here does not do much till the water gets 47 -49 deg.
