As I said last week, I picked up the new Starcraft STX 2050 and promised some BIG walleye action…

First off, let me tell you, Starcraft really nailed it this year with the new Team Starcraft wraps.  Our boats look amazing, and the detail        with the fish bones on it and the way it comes alive when the sun is on it, awesome!!!   I’m really proud to be part of the Starcraft Pro Staff.  I gotta throw a shout out to Nancy, Greg, and the rest of the crew for putting in the extra time to make sure we had our boats in time for the first tournament of the year.  Also, the guys at Vic’s Sports Center are the best boat riggers around, and they did a top notch job of getting me all rigged and ready to rock quickly.

After break in Thursday, my brother Kevin and I launched out of Catabwa on Friday morning.  The atmosphere was buzzing with enthusiasm, as it was many of the guys first days on the water this year and reports of some massive fish have been circulating amongst the Erie walleye community.    Kevin and I started running out, and the screen on the Lowrance was lit up with marks.  I headed towards E can and as I got up there, the screen dried up, so we stopped and decided to start trolling back in the direction of the good marks to the south towards F can.  The water started to dirty up the further south we went, and so came the fish.  We popped a 3 nice fish in the 8-11lb range.  I was excited to try the new school umbrella rigs by Jonanthan Shoemaker, and sure enough we got one on the 1oz 25back with a Glowby Ripstick.  After this, we decided to do some running around, and found the reefs area was mostly a mud pit, and B-C can didn’t have to marks nor the water color we were looking for.   The best water color is about 18″ visibility where you can just barely see the cavitation plate.  Any less and its tough to get them to bite, and more and there aren’t any fish.  So we ended the day back by G can trolling towards F.  That was the area.  Our teammates Scott and Jay caught over 55lbs for there best 5 fish that day, with at 13.5lber.

Saturday and takeoff, the lake was a pancake and I get to let the Starcraft rip full bore.  The Mercury Pro XS had us running 57mph across the Lake and the tourney season had begun!  As soon as we set up, we had a fish on.  Smaller one, 5-6lbs, but nice to put a fish in the boat right off the bat.  Unfortunately, we were only able to boat 2 more the rest of the day.  Nice fish, but obviously you need 5 good ones to be in contention in a tourney like this.   At the end of the day, we went through a hot zone where we had 4 bites in a 45 minute stretch, but were only able to boat one of them.   That’s how it goes, in tournament fish, you gotta capitalize on your bites, and we didn’t.  Would those other fish have put us in contention?  Who knows but I wish we could have found out.  Speeding up a bit to 1.4mph at the end of the day helped trigger those bites for us.   40-60′ back on Blue Glass Husky Jerk was our best set of the weekend by far.  I think the super calm lake on Friday hurt the bite a bit, as only 12 of 50 teams had a 5 fish limit.

Congrats to teammates Mike and Steve for pulling 52lbs to get the win!  They pretty much did the same thing we did, just they capitalized on there bites and made it happen!  WTG guys!

It was good to get back in the groove of things this week and I look forward to an awesome season.  As this weather warms up a bit, expect those fish to turn their feed bag on and we should have some phenomenal action!  See you on the water soon!

-Ryan