NWT @ Merritt Reservoir Report

My tournament partner Pete Meister and I were lucky enough to spend three wonderful days a Nebraska’s most beautiful lake. Merritt Reservoir in nothern Nebraska was the second stop on the Nebraska Walleye Trail. Tournament anglers found it to be another tough bite as only 4 limits were brought to the scales at the Sunday tournament.

Pete and I arrived at 3:00 AM Friday morning after having a blow out on the boat trailer on the way up. We set up camp and went to sleep. We awoke to some rain at 7:30 and decided to get a little more sleep. The rain finally stopped around 10:00 and we got the boat in the water shortly after. I had heard some reports of spawning females still being caught the previous weekend on the dam, so that’s where we started. We tied on #7 Rattling Susspending Shad Raps and on the first pass Pete nailed a nice 24 1/2 inch male that was still milking. There were a few boats several hundred yards away so we decided to leave a good thing alone and moved on. We headed up the Powder Horn area in search of sumerged weed beds. We marked lots of fish on the sonar but no luck. We even went down with the underwater camera and seen lots of walleyes. They were all hugging the bottom with their fins all tucked in. You could bump them with the camera and they didn’t seem to care. We couldn’t find any active walleyes the rest of the day. We made our way back to the dam around sundown to look around with the underwater camera. There were walleye every where and they were crusing. We also saw several schools of shad. We figured this had to be our number one priority come tournament day so we left them alone and headed back to camp for the night.

Saturday brought a little bit warmer weather and a little sunshine. We got up at 5:00 so we could be the first one on the water. We headed to the dam and were marking the walleye and shad on the sonar, but we couldn’t catch one. Around 7:30 or so Pete nailed a nice 41 inch muskie. What a fun catch that was. Other anglers were starting to make their way onto the lake and so we headed out in search of another spot we could add to our short list of spots. We headed up the Powder Horn again and made a stop in Hidden Lake. It didn’t take long and I nailed a nice 24 inch walleye on a leech under a slip bobber. That however turned out to be the only walleye of the day. We tried several different spots with slip bobbers and nothing came of it. We got off the lake a little early so we could clean our only walleye of the day for supper. Grilled walleye with a little salt and pepper is really good the night before a tournament.

We awoke at 5:15 Sunday morning and prepared for the day. We were team 24 out of 55 teams and we headed out at 7:15 in flight #2. We watched 19 boats in the first flight head up the Snake River arm of the lake and only one headed up the Powder Horn area. We left and were one of two teams that headed to the dam. The other team was our friends Zach Fries and Mike Richards. We began throwing cranks and on his 5th cast Pete nailed a nice 21 3/4 inch walleye. We had only been there for 5 minutes and we had one in the boat. What a great feeling. We stayed there untill 10:45 and couldn’t catch another one. With the sun out we decided to try slip bobbers in the weed beds again. We headed to Hidden Lake first and no luck. We tried about 8 different spots in the Powder Horn for 20 minutes each and nothing. It was close to noon and we decided to go back to the dam for the last 2 hours. We got there and Zach and Mike had just returned there also. We had a couple of hits and Pete and I both were broke off by what we beleive to be muskie or pike. Zach and Mike landed a few pike and muskie too. Then as we were about 5 minutes from heading to check-in Pete connected with another 21 3/4 inch walleye. What a great feeling to land another fish 5 minutes before we had to head in.

We headed in and Pete took the fish to the scales. Our final weight was 7.13 pounds. Good enough for 10th place. We went from 101st in the points to 19th. That was just what we needed. It sounded like the first and second place teams were jigging. The winning team was second at the first tournament of the year and now have a nice lead in the points. Congratulations Jason Hunt and Jason Erickson, you guys sure know what you are doing with jigs.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. My camera is in for repairs and I should have it back soon. I’d like to thank Zach Fries for taking the first picture of my walleye from Saturday and for sending another picture of his partner Mike’s muskie from Sunday.

For anyone wanting to head to Merritt for walleyes I would recommend waiting another week or two. I would think the walleyes would be on fire in the weed beds and trees by then.

Ben Garver