In the fall of 2013 Anglers Insight Marketing LLC (AIM) developed a Weekend Walleye Series for Wisconsin and Minnesota based on the success of their Pro Series format of Catch, Record, and Release format. This format allows all tournament fisherman to simply go fish for the biggest fish in the lake regardless of the state or lake slot limits. All fish are released, zero fish brought to the scales to weigh, which results in zero dead fish. On lakes with a tough slot such as Winnie, Leech, and Mille Lacs bringing 5 fish to the scales shouldn’t be a problem….provided you caught 5 fish over 12”.
The process for anglers is unique when recording, yet very simple, resulting in getting the fish back into the water very quickly to ensure a successful release of the walleye regardless of size. The AIM staff provides you with a Judge measuring board unique to AIM, 4gb SD card, and recording sheets for days catch. As the angler you must provide a working camera that will accept the SD card. Aim also has a predetermined weight for each walleye caught from 12” thru 36” in ¼ inch increments. At the end of the day simply choose the 5 biggest fish in length on your scorecard, add the weights, and you have your weight for the day! This process allows each team to go out fishing, have fun, and not have to worry about any fish making it under or over any slot limit. In my opinion this does allow the best team to win, the team who catches the 5 biggest fish wins.
So with Ottertail, Mille Lacs, Leech, and championship on Winnie, Jake Hayes and I thought we would throw our hat into the ring for these events. Now neither one of us has ever fished open water on Leech or Ottertail, so we knew going in this would be a great opportunity to learn new lakes and certainly new fishing techniques. AIM Board of directors also made a great decision to have these tournaments on Sunday as well. This allowed most angles a chance to prefish the Saturday before without missing a day of work. Great idea to get more anglers involved even if you have a tough work schedule.
Stop 1 Ottertail lake in Northwestern MN May 18th, late spring, colder weather, and a fishing technique Jake and I have never fished resulted in a tough day for us fishing. However we came away with a fishing pattern that throughout the rest of the spring on other lakes has yielded some very nice fish. I also returned to fish the lake a few times after tournament to see just exactly what Ottertail Lake has to offer and I think why AIM had chosen this lake as part of the MN AWWS (Aim Weekend Walleye Series)
Stop 2 was Mille Lacs Lake, Central MN on Sunday June 8th. Most everyone knows the potential that Mille Lacs has to offer and it showed with almost a full field with 97 boats signing up for this event. This event was shootout for a bunch of teams, while mighty Mille Lacs also showed her ugly head for lots of boats as well. Very disappointing tournament for Jake and me, as we struggled, not for the lack of fish on the graph, but for the lack of biting fish topside. Still a ton of fun fishing on Mille Lacs Lake.
Stop 3 was Leech Lake, July 13th, Jake and I have never fished this lake before and with conflicting schedules we didn’t have any time to prefish it and it showed. Our original plan was to fish AIM’s wild card event on the Mississippi River but Mother Nature threw us all a curve ball with the high water and the tourney was canceled, therefore leaving us needing to fish the Leech event to qualify for the championship on Winnie. We ended up only catching 4 fish for the day on Leech, we still had fun learning a new body of water.
Last event was the championship to be held on Lake Winnie, August 8th and 9th. This was a 2 day event where you needed to fish 3 prior events in order to qualify. Jake and I had set a goal based on prefishing that we would need to have at least 1 kicker over 24” each day to go along with our other 4 all over 20” to give ourselves a shot at cashing a check or even winning the event. We met our goal of weighing all 10 of our fish over 20” for the two days, but we never got our kickers each day over 24”. We cycled through a lot of fish each day and it was a blast fishing each day.
In summary, we had a ton of fun fishing the AIM Weekend Walleye Series this year. We got to fish new bodies of water, learn new techniques, met new anglers, and meanwhile having a lot of fun doing so without the stress of having to worry about any sort of slot for the particular body of water we were fishing, or even the MN state slot. Would like to thank the AIM board of directors as well as the entire staff of tournament directors for allowing us weekend tournament anglers the opportunity to see firsthand the direction of where all walleye tournament fishing needs to go. Catch Record Release!
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