Well, the first one of the year, Winnebago, was tough. Sorry I missed the blog on that one, but moral of the story was I fished really really hard but struggled all week and in the tourney to get big bites. Tough tournament, you’ll have those, I want to go back because I know I can do well on that body of water. On to the next though, and boy was I ever pumped and motivated to go back and visit this ole sentimental sanctuary of tournament fishing from my yonder years…

Last time I was on Saginaw Bay, it was my first season fishing in the major leagues back in 2010 when we took a 3rd place in the MWC. That catapulted us to the top of the Team of the Year standings and ultimately led us to winning the TOY title. This was the major kick start of my tournament fishing career. It was also just where I needed to be headed after my crappy Winnebago finish.

My June airline life schedule came out and it was ugly, probably mostly due to bad bidding. I got what I asked for, but wasn’t thrilled with how the execution of it would be. The month looked like this: 6 day trip back and forth from Paris to the States, home 1 day, leave for a week (5 day practice then tourney), home for less then a day, then back to Detroit to fly another trip that left at 5am the morning of fathers day. Damnit, that wasn’t going to happen, not with a pregnant wife and 2 sweet toddler girls that need me and frankly I need them (2 days with them in a 3 week period wasn’t going to cut it). I had to adjust if I wanted to do the tournament, so I decided to cut practice short a bit, 4 days, so that I could spend the weekend with the girls after my Paris trip. Side note, we went out and got Julia a kick ass paddle board from my friends a Paddle Climb in Sandusky, so much fun. Even though Julia was talking ‘minivan’ the other day, she still fits the mold of a ‘cool mom’ in my book. I then was able to drop the drop the fathers day trip so I could be have to week off after the tournament. A lot of people don’t realize that us airline pilots are just hourly wage employees, you drop a trip and fly less, you get paid less. But so what, tournament fishing was never about trying to fatten my bank account and family is way more important than a paycheck. Now I was in the right state of mind to go kick some walleye butt up on the Bay. I was able to pack the boat and gear before my Paris trip, then I took all my spinner stuff with me to Paris, and was sitting in the hotel all day tying spinners for Saginaw, I’m pretty sure I was the only guy in France tying walleye spinners on a 80 degree sunny day. I did wander out for a bit, and couldn’t help but wonder is a Zander was lurking around some pilons in the Seine River there, I should have brought a pitching rod…

First day up on Saginaw was a shorter practice day as we left from Cleveland that morning. All the rumors leading into this tournament was that all the big fish were in the outer bay and out, Steeples and up, translation: 40-100 mile runs. However, with any tournament, I still always like to check close, and the inner bay from where we took off is the nursery of the lake, with tons of smaller fish. I figured I would spend this shorter and very rough day in there and see for myself how ‘small’ these fish were. Also, I figured it would be a good opportunity to get some confidence in programs and baits that I could then take to the ‘big fish’ territory. It went exactly as planned, I hopped around and graphed with my Lowrance electronics various places in the lower bay. Everywhere I went we caught fish, and some fish I thought that weren’t even that bad 20-23″ fish. Ok then, on to the next couple days. These days I beat my head against the wall putting endless miles on the Starcraft Mercury Pro XS combo in the gin clear waters of the outer bay. We caught fish, and even some good ones, but nothing extraordinary. At one point I thought I was on to something when I popped 2 back to back plump 23-24″ fish pulling spinners of rock humps surrounded by deep water known as the Steeples. Then I couldn’t repeat. Teammate Randy Gaines had a monster day of practice up in Harrisville one day, then he went back the next day to be blanked a goose egg. Ugh, we had no confidence in these big fish outer bay spots. Atleast not enough to make a 50-90 mile run on day 1 of the tournament, which was going to greet us with a brisk W-NW wind. Last day of practice, I went back to the inner bay and did a milk run of spots from the first day. Sure enough we got them again, and with even some nice 20-23″ fish again. I ran spots with both spinners and crankbaits, and it seemed the crank baits had the edge. A good friend of mine told me before this tournament, “Just fish your own plan.” Sounds simple, but very true and very deep in some ways. Sometimes its hard to not get caught up in the rumors or what you are hearing other people are doing or what it’s suppose to take to win a tournament. But more times than not, you’re best off just fishing what you know and what you’ve seen through your eyes in your practice. Just fish what you’ve got going. So that’s what I decided to do, go pull crank baits, with spinners rigged and ready as a backup, on shallow water sand and mud flats in the inner bay. Maybe, just maybe, if I had a decent bag of smaller cookie cutter 20-21″ers and the lake layed down I would run out to the Steeples to look for a kicker fish. That was my plan.

So game day came an I started in my first spot in 16-18′ of water just off a sand bar that broke into 30’+. In reality, I hadn’t spent a whole lot of time fishing there in practice, so it wasn’t like I had the baits and leads dialed in. I went out to the spot in somewhat ‘pre-fish’ mode, 4 different baits at 4 different areas in the water column, from mid way down to digging in the dirt. Everything caught fish, but it became apparent that crank baits digging in the dirt were catching the bigger fish. A #11 flicker minnow, slick sunset, at 90′ back was catching the better grade of fish. A check of the precision trolling app says with the 10lb Berkley XT line I was using, that bait was 17′ down, and I was between 16-18’of water. I had limit of 5 fish quickly, but wasn’t thrilled with the size, so I moved to my secondary spot which was similar in that it was a sandbar that dropped from 12-14′ into deeper water. Here I went to a similar program and put most of the baits right on the bottom with the use of precision trolling data. #9 Flicker minnow in flashy pearl 45′ back and again that hot #11 slick sunset 60′ back started doing work. 20+” fish were flying in the boat. Along with a boatload (literally) of catfish and sheephead. It turned into a 7hr fire drill of constantly fighting fish (be it a walleye, sheephead, or catfish), resetting lines, and culling out walleyes in my livewell. I can’t thank my Co-Anglers Tom on day 1 and Ken on day 2 for their work. Work it was, and efficiency of getting fish in and lines back in the water was critical, these guys were champs.

Day 1 I ended up weighing 19.5lbs for 12th place, boooyeah, its such an awesome feeling being in the hunt going into day 2. On day 2, it was the same deal, I even went to some bigger baits like Reef Runner 800s 35′ back in the dirt to try to get some bigger bites. It didn’t seem to matter, if you put a crank bait rubbing bottom, it was going to catch walleyes. I didn’t catch the bag I thought I would or that I had day 1, but I ended up with 17.5lbs for the day and was able to move into 8th place in a major tournament of some of the best 107 walleye anglers in the country. As I expected, the fish are tough here to keep track of, and a lot of the guys that did well on day 1 struggled on day 2, which enabled me to move into the top ten. As much as I want to win one of these, I’ll gladly take a top ten any day.

The guys who won the tournament and who were in the top 5 were all running 60-90 miles to either the Harrisville or Port Austin area. Hats off to them, they figured out a consistent bite that we couldn’t pattern enough to make a run like that 2 days in a row. As far as I know I was the top finisher that stayed within 20 miles of takeoff. I’ll take it. Congrats to teammate Randy Gaines for the help with prefish and the great finish in 11th place. Big thanks to Adam Hudak who traveled with me and was a huge help in practice, as well as Bob Luellen of World Wide Marine Insurance for the great meals we had all week, that man can cook!

Also a big thanks to my sponsors who provide the best damn gear on the market that enable me to fish the way I do. That Starcraft STX with the Mercury Pro XS in a beast on big water. Keeping fish alive on long runs in hot weather with 70+ degree water is no joke, that Starcraft live well was awesome. Off Shore Tackle Boards are the best in the business for reading strikes and keeping fish buttoned up, subscribe to my youtube channel for a video coming out soon on how I rig my boards for walleye… Obviously the Berkley Flicker Minnows were by far my best bait, and the 10lb XT mono was critical in being able to dial in the depth with the use of precision trolling data app. Abu Garcia Venerate Trolling rods matched with Altum line counters were my go-to trolling setups. Berts Custom Tackle rod holder pro cradles enable quick pick of the rod for a good hookset when trolling the cranks (I didn’t lose many fish, super critical). Gotta love the Simms Solarflex gear for keeping me comfortable all day on the water without having to rub sunscreen all over and still not getting sunburned. Lowrance electronics, I would be lost without them. So critical in finding fish, and staying on the right contours with the use of Navionics Sonar Charts. Using the sidescan in combination with my Aqua Vu camera in identifying these sandbars that broke off into deeper water was critical. Those were the spots that the fish related too.

As much as I was excited for and planning on fishing the whole tour, and going off to Devils Lake and Lake of the Woods in coming months, its not going to happen, not this year at least. We just have too many things going on: kids events, family reunions, weddings, anniversaries, and pilot life. It’ll be too hard to fish the tournament the way I want and make everything else happen. In the coming months, I’ll be fishing a lot locally, some guiding, maybe a few local tournaments, and spending lots of time with the girls, hopefully a lot on the water. Stay tuned for more updates on this, and good luck to all my fellow competitors traveling on to Devils and Lake of the Woods!