Lewis and Clark Res. walleye report 10/8 – 10/12

Lewis and Clark Reservoir, located on the Missouri River, in Northeast Nebraska hosted the Nebraska Walleye Association’s State Championship and Open Tournaments this last weekend. The walleye bite was said to be “off” over the previous weekend because water temps remained higher than normal for this time of year but with cooler nights forecasted, it looked like a great bite would set in just in time for the tournament. 47 teams were on the board for the tournament and most of them hit the water early for prefishing.

I made the trip up on Wednesday afternoon and had enough daylight left to hit the water for a few hours. I jigged a dredge hole on the west end of the lake and was joined in the boat for the day by good friend Adam Morotz. The area looked great on the graph and had produced some decent fish for Adam the week before. There seemed to be a fair amount of fish on the upstream breaks of this hole but in the couple of hours we had to fish it we couldn’t get a fish into the boat. This would be the same area I started in on Thursday too. This time I was finally able to put a few fish in the boat. I had a couple of good strikes early on only to pull back bare line. I don’t know if I was getting into some pike or whether they were big eyes. Either way I ended the day with a couple of keepers out of this hole and was looking forward to getting in some trolling on Friday, my last day of prefishing.

The weather report for Friday was looking bleak with winds forecasted to get strong out of the East by afternoon. A strong East wind on Lewis and Clark can make that lake ugly in a very short time. To make things more interesting I received a phone call from my tournament partner on Thursday night and was notified that he was not going to be able to make it for the weekend because of some things that came up at work. I knew this was a possibility so I found out that I would have to fish the tournament by myself as I had already used a substitute earlier in the season. This was going to be a slight disadvantage for the tournament but a challenging experience that I was looking forward to. With strong winds forecasted for Friday I decided to fish with teammates instead of by myself. We spent Friday trolling steep breaks on the main lake. We targeted depths in the 15 to 19 FOW using leadcore, where schools of shad were getting rounded up from hungry walleye and sauger pushing them into shallower water. Making “S” turns down the bank seemed to help us dial these fish in. Several different colors seemed to work for us throughout the day and with several fish caught we only had 4 keepers that would have totaled over 17 lbs. The big fish for the day was a beautiful 28 ¼ inch walleye and also a 24 ½ inch sauger. These fish were both personal best fish for teammate Greg Belgum. Way to go Greg!

With a lot of confidence in our Friday bite our team of 4 boats was ready to get to work on tournament day and cash some checks. The nice thing about the area we were going to troll was the length of the break. It runs nearly half the length of the North side of the lake and has plenty room for several boats. We picked our starting spots and got to trolling. I retired my 12 foot trolling rods for the tournament and switched to 7.5 ft and 8.5 ft rods to better handle fish at the boat since I was left to net my own fish. My day started out great with my first fish coming to the boat around 8:15. It was a nice 19 inch fish that really seemed to take a lot of pressure off of me since I was by myself. On my next pass I was able to connect with fish number 2 on the day, a 20 inch sauger. I was pleased that my fish were coming in the right order, since I was fishing by myself I could only keep my legal limit of 4 fish versus 2 man teams that could keep 8 and weigh their best 5. On my next couple of passes I was able to connect with several more fish but they would all fall under the 15 inch minimum. It wasn’t long though and I added another fish to my basket, a 21 inch walleye. I was really starting to get excited about the bite I was on. I talked to other boats in the area and they were struggling to come up with 1 keeper. I continued on and at 12:15 or so I landed a 15.5 inch fish. Now I was faced with a huge decision. If I kept this fish it would add around 1 lb to my weight or I could throw it back and try for a bigger fish. After a minute or so of thinking I decided to box the fish and end my day one on the water. I have been in a situation before where tossing back keepers can come back to haunt you in a big way. I was just glad that I could come up with 4 fish when I had half as many baits out as the rest of the field. Our team faired very well for the day with Jason Tomich and Bill Love winning the day 1 open, I took 12th, and Bill Kunze and Greg Belgum were 15th. The weekend was made up of 3 tournaments, 2 single day “open tournaments” and the 2 day total for the Nebraska Walleye Association 2008 Championship for members.

Day 2 brought in some different weather with temperatures up several degrees from the day before but this also meant a stiff South wind with gusts to 45MPH predicted. This was going to make fishing the North side of the lake a challenge for everyone. I discussed with teammates how much boat control was going to factor into the day and decided that I would really have to be on my game to put another limit in the boat. Lucky for me the wind forecast was off a little and we only had gust in the mid 30 MPH range. This still made things difficult but not impossible. It took a couple of hours before I was finally able to box my first fish, an awesome 25 inch walleye. I struggled in the wind to come up with more fish like the first one of the day and I finally boxed a 15.5 inch sauger before I had enough of the wind on the North side of the lake. Our team had another productive area on the South side of the lake that would make things much easier for a guy by himself. Although the boat control was better on the South side the fishing was not. I seen a few fish caught by other anglers but I was unable to land another fish myself. I ended the day with 5.7 lbs and 15.3 lbs for my 2 day total for the Championship. It was another great day for my teammates as Gene Brueggemann and Todd Weber made up for their “zero” on day 1 by weighing 17.84 lbs to win the Day 2 Open. I finished a respectable 11th in the open.

As far as our team placing in the Championship, we really faired well. We took home Second Place with Bill Love and Jason Tomich weighing 20.10 for 2 days. We also took 5th Place with Gene Brueggemann and Todd Weber’s 17.84 lbs. I finished in 6th Place with 15.3 lbs and Bill Kunze and Greg Belgum taking home 10th. What an outstanding way for a team to finish the year. I was proud to be involved in this team this year and look forward to improvements we will make next year. Thanks for a great year guys!

As for Lewis and Clark Reservoir, I can tell you right now that this will not be my last trip to that lake this fall. From talking with friends, that have spent many weekends in the fall up there, it sounds like the bite should only continue to improve over the next month. It was said by a couple different people that keepers will be hard to come by in a few weeks. That is, fish SMALL enough to keep. Stay tuned for my next L&C report!