This was a tournament that I had been eyeing up since early Spring.  As many of you know, I made a career move to Delta Air Lines and have been in training since mid-April.   Working for a company like Delta is something I have sought after since I was 18 years old and went in the aviation field.  My focus was and had to be on learning to fly the B757/767.  That didn’t stop me from keeping an eye from a far on the professional walleye tournaments that hit the country by storm come Spring and early Summer.  I knew I would be finishing up training sometime in July and just maybe, just maybe, I would have some down time between training and flying the line to head up to Green Bay and throw down against all the big-guns of the industry.   Wednesday the 15th, I had my final checkride, and got the O.K. from my scheduler to head out of town.   Julia said, “Go, you need this, win us some money.”  I signed up and hit the road Saturday, which would give me 5 days of practice for the tournament on Friday-Saturday the 24th-25th.

For those of you unfamiliar with major tournament fishing, usually, a few of us go together with  3-4 boats, and we work together sharing info to break down a major body of water like this prior to the tournament.   Being that I was so last minute and most of the teams were already set, I decided to do this one on my own.  It was intimidating looking at a body of water 80 miles long and 10-15 miles wide that I had never been on, and knowing that I was going to have to break it down on my own.  I came up with a fairly simple meat and potatoes plan: 1. Call around some contacts that had some experience there (you guys know who you are, thank you) just to get a better understanding of the area.  2.  Use and trust my Lowrance electronics to find fish more than ever!  That size of body of water, I wouldn’t have time to fish if there weren’t the fish I was looking for around.   I trusted my Lowrance electronics to show me those areas.

In prefish, there was lots of rumors of a ‘mud bite’ (fish roaming the lower basin mud flats) that I could never really get going or find.   The first day, I spent a few hours zig zaggin the area and graphing fish, but never found the mother load I had been hearing about.  I caught a few fish, but not what I was looking for.   I shifted focus to shoreline structure on the eastern shoreline.   My first day over there was a little rough, but I went further north to the Sturgeon Bay area, made some adjustments and popped some really nice fish middle of my practice.  My program was 1/2 and 1oz weight with purple and gold spinners (Bugsy Blades) fished close to the bottom.   One thing I knew and learned to appreciate even more was that temperature is supper critical up there.  I took my downrigger speed and temp prob up there and found that the water temp in the top 18-22 feet in my target area was 70ish degrees.  Once you got much below 23-25 feet, it would drop dramatically down to low 60s and 50s.   That helped and taught me to ignore the marks on my electronics below those depths, as the fish down there were salmon, trout, and whitefish, which can easily be confused for walleyes on your sonar, especially at high speed while graphing.    So I shifted my focus to where 18′-22′ of water met structure and searched for walleyes there.  This eliminated a HUGE amount of water.    The day before the tournament I kind of struggled, but got word from a local guide that the fish had switched over to biting crank baits over spinners.

Trusting my electronics and instincts of where I had caught my biggest fish of the weeks, I filled the boat up with gas and burned the 40miles up to the Sturgeon Bay area.  My plan was try the fish with spinners first, if that didn’t work and I was still marking them, I would pull some Berkley #9 Flicker Minnows over them.  Sure enough, I wasn’t catching on spinners but marking good fish and all by myself without a boat in sight, so I switched Flicker Minnows and POW, popped a big fish on my first pass.  I continued grinding this spot out for a few hours with the Flicker Minnows, and boxed 3 fish, 2 of which were my biggest of the tournament.  The bite dried up and I made a run south to another spot.  Flicker Minnows were first in the water, but they kept getting weeded up in this spot.  So I made the switch back to spinners, and filled out my limit of 5 fish.

After weighing in 30.6lbs day one, I was thrilled to be in contention sitting in 11th place out of 129 boats, and knew I was fishing basically all by myself to unpressured fish.   A lot of the top guys from day 1 were fishing community spots with lots of boat pressure.  I went out with the same plan day 1, fish my big fish furthest north first, then work my way back.  We had a little wind shift to the NW and it seemed to dry out my first spot.  I fished it for a few hours with nothing to show for so I packed up and made a run south to my #2 spot.   I caught a couple nice fish on my first pass, and then the wind totally died.  I panicked, because I knew no wind can mean no walleyes biting, so I thought I had to fill out my limit ASAP.   I boated a 22″er and boxed that, not 1 minute later, my other Off Shore Tackle boards start popping, and I had a quadruple on.   Two of the fish were nice 27″ and those got boxed, so now I had 5 fish, but one was as dinky 22″, and this is a no cull, 6 fish only tournament.  So I had 3 hours left to fish, and only got to keep one more fish before my day was over.  I was really wishing I didn’t have that 22″er.  Then the fire drill really started.  I started smashing them, it was dead calm, and I couldn’t believe it, but I needed a hawg.  It was making me sick to throw back 24, 25, and 26ers” one after another, but I needed a big one.   I made the run back up north as it was super calm and could do 58mph to see if a big one would go.  Didn’t happen, so I ran back down to the numbers spot with 30 minutes to go, I popped a chunky 26er” and called it a day with about 15minutes left to fish.   It turned out boxing that 22er” never really hurt me.  Ahhhh, the stress of a no cull tournament, decisions, decisions, I love it.   I weighed 31.5 lbs day 2 and finished happy as a clam in 5th place working on my own, on a body of water I’ve never been to, and against the best in the business on the biggest stage.  Life is good, and I’ll be back.

A few thank you’s I owe:

1.  Starcraft – that boat was a beast in the big water, and in a tournament where I had to run 40 miles in rough 77-80 degree water, my live well kept all 10 of my fish alive and prevented me from getting critical penalties, what can I say.  #beastmode

2.  Mercury – what a motor.   I put 26 hours on that puppy in 7 days of fishing, I needed to get around that bay and it was my flawless workhorse, the power and pop of that 250 Pro XS in big rough water in exactly what I needed.

3.  Lowrance – you found me the fish, catching them was easy.  Also Insight Genesis Social Map was critical in my finding key pieces of structure to key in on.

4.  Vic’s Sports Center – I need some key tune ups and wiring adjustments the day before I left for the tournament, my boat was ready to rock when I got there.  Victor, you are the man.

5.  Dan – Although Dan wasn’t able to get in the tournament as a co-angler due to our last minute sign-up and the long co-angler waiting list, he still traveled with me and helped me prefish all week.  A HUGE help, and plain and simple, I couldn’t have done it without him.

6.  Craig at Erie Outfitters and Scott – there were some key pieces of tackle that I found I needed midway through practice, these guys went out of there way to send me them overnight so I was ready to go on game day.

7.  Julia and Stella – you guys support me so well, I missed you dearly while I was there, but you guys sent me up there to do what I love, thank you.

NWT – I’ll be back soon…