Ahhhh, the Walleye Searchers – many years ago for me – but very important years.

I believe I joined the walleye searchers in the early 80’s. I was newly married and had got a job at IBM in Rochester. I had not fished walleyes very much, but knew I needed to learn more about them since my wife was Lynn Parsons – sister to Gary Parsons. And the Parson’s family liked to fish walleyes.

So a buddy of mine from work (Jeff Stephenson) and I joined the local walleye club – The Walleye Searchers. We joined pretty much as non-boaters to learn as much as we could from the members about fishing the closest walleye waters – the Mississippi.

I had a 14 foot boat with a 18hp Sea Horse engine (both about 20 years old), a transom trolling motor that was held in place with a bungee strap. It had some wooden shelves I had built across two of the bench seats to hold my Lowrance Green box. Even with all this high tech equipment (LOL), I decided non-boater was the way to go.

I can still remember the first tournament I entered with the club. Can’t remember the guys name, but he had a bass boat. We pretty much spent the whole day running up and down the river, through the backwaters, and stopped only briefly at spots to pitch a few jigs to willows before revving up the engine to blow to another spot. It was cool to see a guy run his boat so fast – and I did learn a lesson – you can’t catch fish when your lines are out of the water….

But it wasn’t too long after that and I drew one of the most important people in my fishing career to that date – Gary Polokowski. Gary was known for his ability to catch pool 4 walleyes. In one day, in his boat, I learned the basics of vertical jigging. How to control the boat so our jigs were right below us, nice and vertical. How to circle on spots that held fish. How to work the jig to keep it close to the bottom and in contact with the bottom. He didn’t say a lot but by just paying attention I was on my way to developing my skills for tournament angling. By the way, we won that tournament day.

I got to fish with many other great guys – many of whom I can’t remember their name – but I remember the technqiues – 3-ways at the mouth of pepin, lead core on maiden rock, pitching the rail road tressel area, pitching wing dams, sonars at the red wing bridge…. This is why you join a club like Walleye Searchers. It is a club that disseminates walleye techniques and tactics – especially on local bodies of water.

Walleye Searchers is also the first place I ever did a seminar. I can remember sitting at home practicing – even video taping myself to figure out how to present the information in a logic – yet entertaining fashion. Tough audience since most of them were the guys I most respected in fishing at the time – and now this “newbie” was going to give them a seminar. But the seminar went great – I have given a few more since then – and no – I don’t have to video tape them first any more.

So, if anyone is thinking about joining the Walleye Searchers – or any club for that matter – I think it is a great idea and opportunity. It was certainly one of important factors in getting me to where I am today!

Bite On!

Keith Kavajecz