RCL Walleye Leaque Championship Day One

http://www.flwoutdoors.com/rclleague/tournament.cfm?tournamentidno=1&divisionidno=30&tournamentyear=2003

Click on the site above for the Pro standings.

http://www.flwoutdoors.com/RCLLeague/tournament.cfm?displaymethod=displayTournamentResults&divisionidno=30&tournamentyear=2003&tournamentidno=1&coangler=yes

Click on the above site for the Co-Angler standings.

What a tough bite! It was like fishing on the Croix or Miss with MORE boat traffic! Congrats to the guys who made the finals! I am still waiting to hear the results! We caught small walleye, and large crappies, big bass, but not what it takes to place! Fished lead line and cranks, but just couldn’t get any to stretch!
Back to Pool 3!
Tuck

Am home sitting in the house with the air conditioner on and finally out of the sun. Must of got more sun than I thought as I see I turned into a fish finally [my pic]. Talk about a tough week of fishing. My hat is off to you guys who made it to the 2nd. day. And also to the guys who didn’t make it to the 2nd. day. Alot of hard work went into getting into the Championship by all the guys all year long. Each tournament fished in this circuit this year happened to be at an ”turned off” time for the fish. Each one was tough. Then they had the unreal toughness of this tournament for the Championship. Just to give you an example of how tough this week was: I myself didn’t catch a single ”legal” walleye. Fished Mon.-Fri. and caught 10” eyes and some other fish that don’t count. Nate finally got the best spot we had dialed in on Friday, the day before the tournament, by catching a 14” plus eye,A 16”, and a 21” eye. Again I didn’t get even any legal fish in my boat fishing by him. Now this is a spot where another tournament fisherman told us at the rules meeting that he used his underwater camera to check that spot out that we were fishing and said there was about a 1000 minnows and tons of big fish there in that spot we found and were fishing. But no matter what a person put down there they wouldn’t bite. Heard other reports too from guys saying that they also found spots with big fish there but they wouldn’t bite. After hearing one Michigan tournament guy say that he had driven 851 miles to get there and didn’t even catch a legal walleye and hearing another Michigan guy say that he drove 800 miles to get there and didn’t catch any walleyes at all until catching one in the tournament, our under 200 mile trip to get there didn’t feel quite so bad. Talk about frustrating. Come tournament day and the fish still wouldn’t bite for Nate. Finally shortly before time to weigh in Nate got his big bite and they got the fish up about 5 ft. from the top and the jig comes flying up out of the water. His co-angler looks at him and says: theres goes our chance for tomorrow swimming away. We used minnows, leeches, crawlers, 6 to 7 inch chubs, you name it, these fish were turned off for most everyone. Everyone was warned that we were down there 3-4 weeks too early and they were sure correct. Congrats to Brian Hilgardner and Phil Chapman for making it on the co-angler side to day 2 and congrats to Rodney York, a class act fisherman, who made it to day 2 in the Pro side. Congrats to all of you guys for an excellent year on the RCL Walleye Leaque Circuit. Thanks, Bill

[ps. I don’t know what I’d do if we had ”four” boats sitting in the driveway if Nate would of won one.] LOL.