Lewis and Clark NWT Championship – Walleye Report

My tournament partner, Rusty, and I had the opportunity to fish Lewis and Clark Reservoir last weekend for the Nebraska Walleye Trail Championship. This was the first time for either of use to fish the lake so it was a learning experience to say the least. Neither of us had even fished a body of water quite like Lewis and Clark and when it was all said and done, things turned out great we were very successful. One other thing, with the trouble that we had and then the success we had, pictures were totally forgotten, so sorry for the lack of good fish pictures in advance.
My wife Kelli, my son Ryder and I got up to the lake on Wednesday to get settled into our place that we were staying in and try to get some idea of the layout of the lake. After getting all unpacked and settled the three of us headed out to the Miller Creek are of the lake. We got out the trolling rods and pulled some flicker shads and shad raps in 7’-18’ of water. We did this for a few hours and we were only able to pick up one 11” walleye which Ryder thought was a pretty cool fish, not near as scary looking as most walleye that come in the boat.

Thursday morning Rusty made it up to the lake and we decided to head up the river to see what that was all about. We got to what hey called the chutes area and started making our way in. Before we even got a good start navigating the channel, a boat came barreling out of the river and up onto a sandbar. I was already nerves about trying this out, I really didn’t need to see that!! The channel was a little tricky in spots but we found that once we were able to make it up the river a ways, it did get a little easier to get around. We made it about 3 miles of so past the settlement, where the water towers are and we had enough. I was sore from being so nervous! We turned around and headed back down the river and ended up stopping at a nice deep hole to fish. Now the water was really trashy and tough to pull cranks through but we were able to pick up one 14” walleye before we picked up and headed out to the main lake. By this time it was getting to be the middle of the afternoon and we wanted to troll some more of the big lake. We went east of the Miller creek area, about 2 miles I would guess, and found a nice flat that ran next to the river channel. On that flat we picked up a 16” ‘eye and that was it for the day. Also on Thursday, Wade Kuehl jumped in the boat with Mike Means for some pre-fishing up the river. Their presentation was mainly trolling crank baits in 6 to 12 feet of water at around 2.5 MPH on the Lowrance GPS. They pulled Berkley Flicker Shads and Rapala Shad Raps in brighter colors as the water was pretty dirty in most areas they fished. Wade and Mike managed several nice walleyes, but also failed to take many photos. There were four over the 20-inch mark but they wanted to get them back in the water quickly on the off chance that they’d bite again on tournament day. Wade also managed to find a few smallmouth bass in the 14 to 16-inch range.

Friday, Rusty and I started out trolling the main lake again with only one drum to show for it when we decided to head back to the chutes to try to figure something out in an area that had current. We stopped on a spot just outside of the chutes that they call the “Cabelas Hole”. There was not much for boat activity there but there was real good flow and it looked like a good area. We fished the area for a while and we picked up a 15” walleye on a countdown minnow and we had another fish that came unbuttoned on the way to the boat. This was the most action that we had over the couple of days that we had been fishing, so it was an easy decision to start off the tournament in this spot in the morning.

Saturday morning was tough for us. I didn’t know it, but the spot that we had “found” the day before was the same “spot” that about 20 other boats had found, the “Cabelas Hole”. We started out trolling #5 Flicker Shads and #5 Jointed Shad Raps and other than a fish that came off right at the back of the boat we were struggling. Other boats around us were catching fish, but we couldn’t figure it out. In an act of desperation we went to live baiting. Great decision #1!! We started picking up a fish here and there lindy rigging a floating jig head/crawler. The walleye seamed to want the biggest crawlers that we could find and that led to us getting bit short quite a bit but we did end up weighing 3 fish for about 4 ½ lbs on the first day. That evening the trolling rods went away and all spinning rods but one were rigged lindy w/floating jig head.

Sunday morning was beautiful with sunny skies, a bit chilly and absolutely no wind. We headed back to the “Cabelas Hole” and the action was SLOW. There were a couple of fish being picked up here and there but all in all the fish just weren’t doing there thing at all. Finally there was a bank of high clouds that filtered the sun a little bit and we picked up about a 5-10 mph south wind. We had almost given up on the live bait around 10:00am, when had yet to put a fish in the boat, but I decided to put a jig on and give the live bait thing one last try. Rusty asked what I was doing and I told him we had just as else try a jig before we gave up so he tied one on to. Great decision #2. Right away we started picking up fish, nice fish. The first two fish in the boat were fat walleye around the 20” mark and they were followed by a couple of 18”-19” fatties. We decided to narrow our passes down to about a 75 yard stretch of water that was being the most productive for us. Great decision #3. After coming back around on another pass we hooked into a great fish that went 23”-24”, we were so excited that we didn’t even bother to measure it. We picked up another couple of nice fish and it was time to head into weigh-ins. On the way in we knew that we had a good bag but we didn’t think it was enough to move us much after our weak showing on day one. Well we were wrong. The big fish that we caught ended up being the big fish for the tournament and our bag was one of the heaviest single day weights and we were able to finish with a very respectable 6th place for the Championship.

Lewis and Clark is a GREAT place to take the family!! The facilities around the lake are well maintained, abundant and easily accessible. Kelli and Ryder had a ball at the beach during the day while I was out fishing and Yankton is right there if you need to pick up something for supper. I know that we will make the trip up there again.