Lake McConaughy Nebraska Walleye Report

Lake McConaughy walleye report 6/19/08-6/22/08

The Nebraska Walleye Association held their 3rd and 4th tournaments of the year at Lake McConaughy this past weekend. The walleye fishing at Big Mac has been tough since late last summer and things still haven’t changed much. With the lake level the highest it’s been in the last 5 years there is plenty of flooded timber and vegetation and trying to find numbers of walleye is very difficult to do. For the most part the fish that were caught during the tournaments were very nice fish with only a few limits being brought to the scales for both days.

This year I have a new tournament partner, Bob Yelkin. Bob has years of experience fishing several of Nebraska’s rivers and reservoirs but tournament fishing is a new game for him. After having a difficult time at the first 2 tournaments of the year we were looking forward to heading to Big Mac and getting Bob into some of its great walleye fishing. We hit the water a couple of days early to do a little prefishing and had great weather but the fish were certainly not cooperating the way they have in years past. We started off trolling crank baits to cover some water and hopefully locate some larger schools of active fish. The only schools of active fish to be found were the schools of white bass. I think a lot of fishermen at Mac this last weekend will all agree that the white bass population is in great shape. After covering several miles of shoreline and several different depths Bob and I finally connected with our first walleye. It was a decent 18.25” fish that would be a great fish to have on tournament day. We continued to work this area, just west of the North Shore boat ramp, and couldn’t connect with another eye the rest of the day. We continued to try new areas and different depths on our second day of prefishing but things just weren’t looking up for us. We didn’t boat a walleye all day and were a little puzzled on what to do for the first day of the tournament.

Saturday was the first of two one day tournaments for the weekend and the weather was forecasted to be a little too nice. We had a high of 86 and a very light breeze. After meeting up with our teammates the night before we all had a plan to continue trying new areas and different tactics in hopes that we could dial something in for the second tournament. Bob and I hit some flooded timber first thing in the morning. We threw out some slip bobbers and pitched some ¼ ounce jigs on the other rod. It wasn’t long before the first bobber went down and the hook was set on a small catfish. We caught a few more catfish before we decided to hit another area. This time we headed as far west as I could get without getting my boat stuck. We set up next to some flooded trees in less than 3 feet of water. This spot turned out to produce even more catfish than the last spot and still no walleye. The area looked great as it had a fair amount of current from the Platte River and Otter Creek. I think it just may have been a little too warm as the water temps approached 75 degrees just before noon. After hitting several more similar spots we decided to go troll. It was just about noon time when we got the trolling rods out and put on some Flicker Shads. We focused on the river channel flats at the west end of the lake. We trolled with lead core and had to keep ourselves very busy keeping our baits clean. The 10-13 FOW we focused on was littered with cat tails and other vegetation. All of our hard work keeping baits clean finally paid off around 12:45 when we landed a nice 25.75” eye. This thing was a tank and we were sure happy to finally put one ion the box. After getting our rods back out I decided to check on the fish and she was not doing well. I tried to fizz her and since she came from such shallow water it didn’t do any good. I looked at the water temp and it was getting close to 77 degrees. Not wanting to take a chance of loosing her we decided to go weigh her. It was a long 13 miles back to the scales but she made the trip just fine and was weighed in at 7.19 lbs. What a healthy fish!! With 1 hour and 40 minutes left in the tourney we decided to head back to the west end. It seemed like a long ways to go but we knew that some fish were finally being caught in the area. It didn’t take us long after getting our baits back in the water and we had another decent fish hooked up. This one turned out to be a nice 22 inch fish that weighed 4.04 lbs. We needed to make it to the check in boat by 2:40 and so we headed in just shortly after 2:20. With reports of a very difficult bite coming in from lots of great anglers we knew we could finish in the top 10. Our teammates Jason Tomich and his partner Bill were the day 1 winners with 19.69 lbs. Bob and I finished 4th with 11.23 lbs, and teammates Gene and Jake Brueggemann finished 15th. Not a bad day to have 3 out of 4 of our team in the top 15 out of 71 teams. There were only 32 fish caught on the first day and big fish was 7.8 lbs. Congrats to Jason and Bill on their win!!!

On Sunday we set out with the bite from Saturday still fresh in our minds. We finally had a little breeze to put some chop on the water. There were a lot more boats in the area after everyone heard about the Saturday bite. We struggled to land a walleye all day but witnessed several others being landed. I watched 4 different teams bringing in BIG walleye only to loose them just behind the boat. I’m not sure if they were biting short and shaking the baits or not but it was a disappointment to see friends lose nice fish. One of the most disappointing was to watch my friend Lonnie Snyder and his daughter lose a big one. That little girl had to be heart broken. You’ll get it next time. There was one BIG walleye that didn’t get away on Sunday. That fish belonged to teammates Gene and Jake Brueggemann. Congrats guys on landing the big fish for the day on Sunday. Their fish weighed in at 11.85 LBS!!!!! What a fish!! It also helped them to finish in 7th place on Sunday.

The fishing isn’t great at Big Mac but it should get better with the warmer weather. I would look for an outstanding suspended bite to start any day. For those of you headed out there for the 4th of July weekend I would be sure to watch your electronics for suspended fish hanging out over the river channel on the west 1/3 of the lake. I hope everyone has a safe holiday weekend.