Recap from my week at Lake of the Woods
My Dad and I spent the week of 9/7-9/13 on Lake of the Woods. The highlight of the trip was the quality of the fish and a 7th place finish in the MTT Championship.
Over the course of the week we fished near the Gap, infront of Zippel Bay, the Long Point area, the reefs on the West side of the lake, the Garden Island area, Bridges Reef area, and around the Knight Island reefs. Our best luck, as well as many of the other MTT boats, was near Garden Island, Knight Island, or somewhere in between. One of my favorite things about Lake of the Woods at this time of year is that fish can be caught on almost any technique. We caught fish rigging, jigging, pulling spinners, long line trolling, and leadcore trolling. Trolling leadcore and pulling spinners worked the best for us.
The first day we graphed a rock reef holding fish. We dropped down some spinners and proceeded to catch fish for an hour about as fast as we could get our lines down and then the bite remained steady for another hour. The fish ranged in length from 10-23” and many of them fell just under the 19.5” protected slot, so it looked like we found a good spot to get a nice limit for the tournament. This spot gave me the confidence to focus most of our time on catching fish over 28 inches(“overs”) which we knew we had to do to win the tournament.
For the better part of the next few days we spent most of our time looking for big fish and putting together a pattern to catch them. I was surprised at the number of big fish we caught. Over the 4 days we mainly fished for “overs” we ended up catching 9 ranging from 28 ¼” to 30 ¼”. If I were to guess, for every over we probably caught 4-5 fish between 26-28 inches. That’s 50 trophy Walleyes for 2 guys in 4 days! Thanks to some of Brad Juaire’s tips from his trip in July we were really able to dial in the best pattern pretty fast. The conditions changed quite a bit over the week, but our best baits were Shad Raps, Taildancers, Flicker Shads, and Smash Shads. Trolling them at 1.8-2.2 mph with leadcore worked the best. We tried downriggers and saw other boats catching fish on downriggers, but it wasn’t our best producer for big fish.
Tournament Recap-Day 1 brought a strong N wind that made for a slow 20 mile trip up to the islands. These were the biggest waves I’ve had my Yar-Craft in all year and I was really happy with how it handled the waves. Our first trolling pass in our big fish area yielded 3 fish in the protected 19.5-28” slot including a 27 ¾” Walleye, 2 Walleyes around 15”, and a handful of small Saugers. We ran the same trolling run, caught a few more small fish, but this time we marked no bait and very few fish. We moved over a ¼ mile and tried one more pass, but we weren’t marking fish like we had earlier in the week. Now it was decision time, go to spot B, go get our limit of fish under 19.5” quick, or go to spot C? I’m not sure who first said it, but I kept thinking of the saying “you can’t win a tournament on the first day, but you can lose it” so we opted to go fill the livewell. One hour of pulling spinners on a rock reef and we had a nice limit of keepers. The best spinners for the week were Jolly Roger Tackle Nuclear Perch, Seyka Perch, and Firebelly in size 4 or 5. We decided to hit spot C on the way back to our starting spot. It was a great call because the fish were there and active. Our first 4-5 fish were 23”-25” and then we caught a 27.5” that we both thought was going to be long enough from the second it hit the crankbait. To add a little more salt to the wound, I lost a fish while my Dad was fighting the 27.5” that also felt like a nice fish. Time was winding down and I made the call that we had to start the drive in at 3:15 for weigh ins. At 3:12 I lost a nice keeper right at the boat. Bummed out I put the crankbait down even though there was only a few minutes left. We had everything packed up for the long run and at 3:14 the rod doubled over in the rod holder. I picked it up, but after losing 2 fish back to back I decided to hand the rod off to my Dad. My Dad played it out perfectly as it made numerous runs near the boat before I finally netted our 30 ¼” over. We quickly repacked everything up and made it in on time.
Day 2 started with a strong SW wind that kept building all day. We went to spot C where we had caught our big fish on Day 1. The fish were down there, but not biting like the day before. We picked up some small fish, a couple keepers, and one 25” Walleye in the first few hours. Hoping the fish would turn on in the afternoon, we decided to go get our keepers quick and get back out for the afternoon bite. Backtrolling into big waves while trying to fish a snaggy rock reef wasn’t easy, but we found a small pocket of fish we kept working to get our 6 fish limit for the tournament. I know we could have stayed there and culled for awhile to get a better limit of fish, but we knew we couldn’t win without another big fish. We left ourselves 2.5 hours to troll for a big fish. They were there and we did get a couple upgrade keepers, but we never caught any big fish. We left ourselves plenty of time to get in, fished in the Gap area for about 20 minutes, and then headed in.
We ended up weighing just over 30 pounds for the event placing us in 7th place. Going into the event I really thought we could win it, but we didn’t catch another “over” so we were really happy to still place in the top 10. On top of it we ended up winning the option pot, so that more than doubled our winnings for the event. Congrats to all of the other anglers as well. My Dad and I will be fishing most of the MTT events againg next year. If someone is looking to fish their first Walleye tournament next year, find an MTT event and give it a try.
Here are some pictures from the week.
You guys made a lot of good decisions during the 2 day tourney and it paid off in a big way!