Merritt Reservoir Nebraska Walleye Report mid July

A terrific walleye bite at Merritt Reservoir in Nebraska should only continue for weeks to come. I spent four days fishing the reservoir last week and had a great time with a lot of walleye brought to the boat. I witnessed several different techniques working by different boats but the trolling bite seemed to be one of the better bites. Water levels at the lake are still high with all the recent rains but they will soon start to drop and I suspect the trolling bite will only improve.

I headed to Merritt on Thursday July 10th to start pre-fishing for the Nebraska Walleye Association’s last two tournaments of the regular season. The tournaments were held on Saturday and Sunday and they were scored as individual tournaments. My pre-fishing began on Thursday morning. I was joined in my boat by my good friend and fellow NWA competitor Gene Brueggemann. He’s also known as Big Fish Brueggemann after catching the 11.85 lb monster walleye at Lake McConaughy earlier in the season. We started off our morning pitching jigs to weed beds and didn’t have much luck. We gave that technique an hour or so and then we took off trolling. We soon found out that the morning bite was decent with a few smaller fish coming to the boat. As the day went on the bites became fewer, that is until 3:00. We were trolling a steep break line in 20 FOW, I was up front on the bow mount keeping us in our target depth, and Gene was manning the rods and controlling the speed on the kicker. He kept us dialed in to the 2.1 – 2.4 mph range and we kept our baits a foot or so off the bottom by using leadcore. It didn’t take long and I heard Gene say that he was snagged up on a log or a branch, but it just didn’t seem like it was truly a branch. He treated it like a fish and when the line counter reel said 30 feet to go Gene hollered “It just got FISHY and it’s BIG”. With Gene in great control of the fish, I pointed the bow mount towards deeper water and headed to the back of the boat to slow down the kicker motor. Gene did a great job landing this large fish on a 5 foot “shorty” trolling rod. A lot of guy’s doubt the ability of this rod to land big fish but if you utilize your drag and work the rod when a fish runs they are more than capable of handling 8 lb plus walleyes.

Pre-fishing continued on Friday with an improved trolling bite. We had a decent breeze in the morning and some 25 mph gusts later in the afternoon. This wind sure seemed to get the weedline walleyes to snap. I had a great day on the water with my substitute partner, France Coffey. France is a great jig fisherman and adjusted very quickly to leadcore trolling techniques. We boated several keepers for the day and ton of sub-legal eyes to keep us busy. After discussing the days bite with teammates Friday night we decided we had a great area that would put out enough fish for all of us to be successful.

Saturday was the first of the two tournaments and the day started off great. It didn’t take long to find our weedline bite was still decent. We started off with our first keeper measuring 18 1/8 inches, a decent fish that falls into Merritt’s middle slot. The next 2 keepers that came to the boat were 17 ½ inch fish that filled out our 2 spots for the “under 18” over 15” slot” on Merritt. For the next couple of hours I was worried about that 18 1/8 inch fish. After having a few fish shrink up on me at the NTC tournament this year I was concerned about this fish falling below the 18 inch mark which would get us disqualified for possessing 3 fish under 18. Our next fish that came to the boat was a dead on 18 inch fish. With the other fish shrinking up a little I didn’t want to take a chance so I regrettably released it. This would turn out to cost us dearly as we were unable to boat another fish over 18 inches the rest of the day. We ended the day in 27th place. We scored decent points for the end of the year points but I sure wished I would have headed into the scales early with the fish I released in the early afternoon. It was just one of those lessons you learn as you go. Always remember that in Nebraska a great goal in tournaments is to weigh as many fish as you can even if they are on the shorter end of things. Our team faired very well for Day 1 taking 1st Place, 6th Place, 9th Place, and 27th Place. Congrats to our teammates Bill Kunse and Greg Belgum for their win. Great job guys.

Tournament 2 on Sunday looked to change things up a little for everyone. The weather was forecasted to be hot with light and variable winds. My initial thought was that the shallow morning bite would be short lived and then the fish would slide out to deeper water as the sun moved up in the sky. Our first hour of fishing was on the slow side with only a few sub-legal fish coming in. Around 9:00 we moved out to 15-16 FOW and found the fish in this area to be very active. We started off with a 24 inch pike followed by a large drum. Over the next hour and a half we boated more than a dozen walleye with 6 of them being keepers. We had great slots before we knew what hit us and now had the rest of the day to somewhat relax and fish for our 2 fish for the over slots. We caught several more legal fish but finished the day unable to upgrade our smaller fish. We placed 4th for the day and scored great points to end the year in the Top 10 in the final point standings.

The bite at Merritt was great for several teams with a lot of different tactics working. With the irrigation season getting into full swing in Nebraska the lake will quickly drop over the next week or two and the fish that were relating to the weeds will be forced to move out. Typically this gets the suspended walleye bite into full swing. One of the most popular tactics over the next few weeks will be trolling the old tree tops along the Snake River channel.