I really wanted to get this done yesterday, but I was cooking the meat for the neighbor’s graduation party yesterday. It ended up taking up most of my time. After getting up at 3:30 on Saturday, and three am yesterday, I am still feeling BEAT UP.
You could not have asked for a better morning to have a tourney than Saturday. We checked in at Jeff’s Bait Shop about 5:15 am and headed to the launch at Sterling St. Park. Once in the water we headed out to 25 foot of water in front of the River Raisin.
This is the program that we ran at first when we got started. 4 oz bottom bouncers off the front sides of the boat. Then 2 oz Bass Pro keel weights off the Church Tackle Walleye boards, two boards per side. The key was that the extra weight from the keel weights allowed me to get down near the bottom with some accuracy. I ran those 26 ft down, before attaching the boards. The sliding weights on the bottom of the boards allowed them to ride true in the water while dragging the 2 oz weights. The St. Croix Premier Glass rods handled the drag on the boards like a champ.
We headed almost on a bee line towards Sputnik and we learned two things quickly; copper Ludington watermelon was going to be a hot blade on the crawler harnesses, and the two starboard boards were going to be a problem. I solved that issue by switching out my inside board set up, and replacing it with a long line with a Jet #30 with a harness off the back of the boat, 110 ft of line let out.
That turned out to be the smartest move I made during the day, because all the rods started getting action at some point during the morning. Another good move turned out to be giving some willow blades a try out in a tourney situation. I have never had much faith in them before, mostly due to never pulling a fish on them before Saturday. That changed quickly when I put on a #4 Fishlander Happy Hooker/gold blade rig on one of the port boards. This combination produced our two largest fish for the day, one 4.89 andthe big fish for the tourney, one 5.25 lbs. One came early, while the second one came near the end of the morning for us.
Never had the boat going over 1.6 mph the whole morning, with most of the time running about 1.3 mph. Best blades for the day besides the Happy Hooker, were the copper Ludington blades (both Fishlanders), Silver Streak’s Confusion and Eriedescent and Northland’s Baitfish Image Golden Shiner. The Northland GS blade produced so well because they mirror the color of the main bait this time of the year, the mayflies that were all around us.
We landed 19 walleyes that day, throwing two undersized fish back in. Had several come off at the boat, while catching a dozen plus small perch and at least that many sheephead. One of the sheephead was stripping the Power Pro off the reel fighting like a 10 lb fish, but only weighing in at a lil’ over 5 lbs.
The weather for the tournament was fantastic with the perfect fishing chop on the water, and Jeff’s Bait and Tackle ran a great tourney for their first time out. There were plenty of prizes for the first three spots, just take a look at the pic down below of all the goodies I got for finishing second with 18.69 lbs and winning the big fish prize.
Hats off to Tony Vitale and his partner for winning this first annual event with over 19 lbs at the scale. Tony reads the blog from time to time, and we have emailed back and forth several times, so forgive me not remembering your exact weight. They were also running meat rigs, but were out deeper and running a quite a bit faster while dragging their harnesses.
To be honest I thought I had you guys this year. Last year we both fished the Matthew’s walleye tournament, and they were running spoons then. With the luck I was having with the meat rigs, I knew it was going to be a close weigh in. Congrats on your finish, two nicer guys you will not meet folks.
For those of you who wanted to fish the tourney, but didn’t, this is what you missed. Besides the good food provided by Eric, the owner of Jeff’s B&T, you missed some great conversation after the weigh in was said and done. Guys and gals talking fishing, comparing notes, what was working and what wasn’t. You pick up a lot of good information that way and everyone gave their tactics freely. I will definitely be fishing the “2nd Annual” next year.
Here are all the pics.
The second place prize included cash and goodies from the bait shop, Silver Streak, Domka Outdoors, Bootlegger Tackle and Knutson’s Recreational Sales. Got a nice trophy for the big fish, and a smaller version for 2nd place as well.
The 17 fish that we brought in. Forgot to mention, a couple of teams also caught steelhead out on the lake today, very nice looking healthy fish they were too.
The five fish we weighed in.
Here is a pic of the two biggest fish we caught.
