Big Walleye On Small Plastic

Here is a picture of a nice 28” walleye I caught on Friday 11/21/03 at the Pool 4 Red Wing dam area. It was caught in mid morning while vertical jigging a plastic super doo in a dark color. Darrell Klevan was my low paid guide ($0) for the day and so far gets my top guiding honors for the year. In fact, my three big fish this year came while fishing in other people’s boats. Unfortunately, these partners probably expect me to guide for them as well as they have guided for me – maybe I’ll just get rid of my boat so as not to look too bad

It sure did feel good releasing a trophy size fish like this one. Earlier this year I caught a similar length walleye and put it in the live well as we were fishing a tournament – it ending up dying. I can truthfully say that I got more satisfaction from immediately releasing this fish alive, than from the high tournament placing for the dead fish.

Dave Gulczinski

Great looking fish, Dave!

Congrats.

Jon J.

Beautiful walleye Dave.

Congrats Dave nice fish.

Hey Dave,

What kind of Personal Floatation are you wearing in that photo? Is that an inflatable jacket or does it just go around the waist?

Thanks,
Jon J.

Jon,

The thing around my waist is a “Sterns Inflatable Belt” which I have worn since spring. I do not like any kind of life jacket that has foam in the back area as it forces me to sit in an awkward position that makes my back muscles ache. This is a very light weight comfortable belt that has improved my fishing pleasure more that any other item I have ever bought – that is how much I like it.

You can see one by clicking on the below link:

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/pod/horizontal-pod.jhtml?id=0017611&navAction=push&navCount=5&indexId=cat21312&parentId=cat21312&parentType=index&rid=&_DARGS=%2Fcabelas%2Fen%2Fcommon%2Fcatalog%2Fpod-link.jhtml_A&_DAV=MainCatcat21276

Dave Gulczinski

Hey Dave…NICE FISH….
So you finally decided to DOO the DOO…
Look what happen’s….
Hey Dave what color did you get her on?
I think I was just watching yesterday.
I never got a fish over 17 inches…And I was Doo’ing it for part of the afternoon…
Great Picture…and now you got the memories..

Well Greg,

If you didn’t get a fish over 17” yesterday then you should fire your guide My guide, Darrell, was hot as he had us on nice sauger (up to 19”) most of the day. In fact, he also out fished me by catching twice as many fish as I did. My excuse was that I had a bad elbow but that doesn’t account for the other times Darrell and Kerry, and Mitch have also done me in with plastics. I have been seriously fishing plastics for about 2 years and still don’t have a real good touch with them — I guess I’ll just have to practice more. By the way it was a mostly black super doo.

Dave Gulczinski

Good job Dave…your right my guide is FIRED!!!!

Gerg,

I’m in big trouble now! If your guide is “FIRED-UP”, then the walleyes in Pool 4 are all goners – they may just as well jump in your guides boat because they will end up there anyway. Please tell your guide to leave a few for the rest of us average fishermen.

Dave

Nice fish Dave! How deep of water were you vertical jigging in when you got that mama eye?

geeeee Dave… thats probably the largest ‘eye Ive heard of on a Doo… generally the big girls dont chomp em for some reason….. you get lots of REAL nice fish… but Ive not got anything bigger than 22″

Hi Dustin,
That walleye was caught in about 18’ of water. I bet it is the same fish you catch each morning, and James catches each evening while casting to the shallow rip rap shoreline. She just happen to want a lunch time deep water snack while my jig was in front of her nose. Many thanks go to the fishermen like you and James for quickly releasing her after each catch. I hope she can get caught and quickly released many more times before her days are over.

Dave G