Sherman Reservoir 7-13-07 – 7-15-07

Last Saturday and Sunday was the Nebraska Walleye Trail’s last regular season tournament held at Sherman Reservoir. The race for the end of the year points has been tight for several teams this year. Everyone was looking to do well to hold on to or gain some spots in the points for a shot to qualifiy for the 2008 National Team Championship. Rumor of an "off and on bite" and scattered fish all week was going to make this an interesting tournament.

We spent our prefishing on Friday looking for some fish that would be away from the crowds of boats. We were trolling leadcore with a variety of different crank baits. As it turns out, the colors that were hot for us last year at this time were not the go to baits again this year. We really struggled to find some fish away from the crowds but had a pattern that Pete used the weekend before to fall back on. The previous Sunday Pete was able to pick up a 27", 24 1/2", and 2 22" fish all in a couple of hours. We figured we’d fall back to this set up to start the tournament on Saturday morning. We planned to target 19 to 21 feet deep in 25 feet of water or so by running 3 colors of leadcore with jointed crankbaits.

Saturday morning we headed to our first spot and got to trolling. We were marking fish in a couple different areas of the water column and decided to set a couple rods at different depths until we found out which fish were more active. It took a little while for us to hook up with a fish but after that first one we decided to duplicate that set up on the other rods. That first fish was short but he was aggresive. We were now dialed in with 3 colors of lead out and we had the same jointed crankbait on all 4 rods. Within the next half hour we put three keepers in the boat on three passes over a spot that was stacked with fish. Other boats in the area really started to move in to see if they could get in on the action but most were unable to catch more than one. We spent the next couple of hours waiting to get a perfect run of the hot spot and also playing defence to keep others off the spot without getting anyone mad at us. Well it worked out in our favor and we were able to get a fourth fish from the spot before the bite died. We spent a few more hours on that side of the lake looking for another pod of fish and couldn’t catch nothing but short fish. Finally with about 45 minutes to go we trolled our way to the other side of the lake looking to see if the fish moved out over deeper water. We marked a few bait fish over the deeper water but there were no walleye with them. As soon as we got to the other side of the lake and in the same depth zone we caught our other fish in we bgan to mark some nice fish again. It didn’t take long and we caught our 5th keeper of the day and headed to the scales 15 minutes early. The fish had crushed the bait and was bleeding from his mouth and I didn’t want to take a chance on him dying. Our 5 fish basket weighed 10.74 lbs and was good enough to put us in second place for the day.

Sunday morning we wanted to stick to our game plan from Saturday and see if we could put together another 5 fish basket. We started the moring searching for the pods of active fish where we caught our first 4 on Saturday. They seemed to be spread out and were not willing to bite. After several hours of only catching a few shorts we decided to move to a little deeper water. We kept the baits running the same depth but there were no active fish in the area. Next we moved up a little more shallow than the day before and on our first pass we picked up a nice 26 1/4 inch fish from 22 feet of water. The fish was bellied up in the live well even after I fizzed it. We didn’t want to take any chances on it dying so we headed to the scales. Pete drove the boat while I kept the fish upright in the live well. I felt that this would give the fish the best chance of a safe release after we weighed her. She weighed in at 5.35 lbs and we took the lead for the Big Fish for the tournament. We headed back out after only losing 15 minutes or so of fishing time and got back down to business. We strugled the rest of the day to find another keeper and had to go in with only one decent fish for the day. We had heard there was some nice fish caught and we knew our Big Fish for the tournament would be short lived. What we didn’t know was that the first place team from Day 1 didn’t catch a keeper all day. The second day bite turned out to be a little tougher for everyone with the exception of some bigger fish being caught. We had the lead with only a few teams left to weigh and they all came up short of catching us. We won our second tournament of the year at Sherman by almost 3 lbs and we were as happy as could be. We’re waiting for the final NWT points standing to come out later this week to see if we made it into the top 10 in points. This could give us a nice bonus check as well as double qualifing us for next years National Team Championship.

If anyone is looking to head to Sherman in the next few weeks the fishing should only get better. The lake is dropping fast and as soon as the water is out of the shoreline trees more of the walleye and shad will be susspended and the bite will be a little more fast and furious.