Merritt Reservoir – NWA State Championships

The Nebraska Walleye Association wrapped up the 2009 season last weekend at Merritt Reservoir in the beautiful sand hills of Northern Nebraska. The weekend included 3 separate tournaments. Saturday and Sunday were each scored as one day tournament and then the two day weights would be combined to score for the State Championship. The winner of the Championship would be guaranteed a spot for next years National Team Championship. The bite at Merritt has been incredible this year because of low baitfish populations from a recent winter kill. For weeks anglers have been catching fish in shallow water along weed lines and submerged trees along the shore. With water temps in the mid 70’s we knew a suspended bite would be a good possibility when we dropped the boat in the lake on Thursday.

After driving up late on Wednesday night and catching a 4 hour nap in the boat my cousin Pete and I hit the water with a plan in place. We headed to some of the first submerged trees in the Snake River arm of the lake. I knew the trees topped out around 12 feet below the surface of the water. We dropped a random selection of cranks in various colors over the side of the boat using leadcore and set up to run right over the tops of the trees. On our first pass we landed 2 fish that measured right at 23 inches. It was an incredible start to an incredible 4 days of fishing. We didn’t want to draw too much attention to the area so we only made one more pass over the trees and landed another fish that taped out at 25 inches. From there we moved down the lake to another area know for submerged trees. These trees are a little deeper and took a slight adjustment of line out to reach them. It sure didn’t take long to put a 27 inch walleye in the boat. After our first four fish we decided that we better start to look around for some smaller fish. Merritt reservoir has different regulations than a lot of lakes in the state and we are only allowed 1 fish per person over 22 inches. Anglers are also only allowed 1 fish between 15-18 inches and the rest or all of your basket can fall in the 18-22 inch range. We knew for a good tournament weight we were going to need 3 good slots to go with a couple of overs. The very next area we trolled had us switching our setup a little bit. We arranged our baits to cover different depths as we contour trolled the bank. Our target depths were 17 FOW on the shore side of the boat and 20 FOW on the open water side of the boat. This was an area that Pete and I had done well at in the past and it sure didn’t take long to see it was going to produce some great fish for us once again. We boated several slot fish that measured in the 20-21 inch range. It seemed too easy on Thursday and we hoped that the bite and the size of the fish we were catching would continue. We ended the day on the water around 3:00 and headed in to clean a nice selection of eater sized fish. We had a great time Thursday night with our teammates and some friends from the NWA. We had a big fish fry with some tasty morel mushrooms that Mike Means was kind enough to save for this special occasion. Thanks Mike!!

Friday morning we hit the water with a plan to double check our hot spots and see if we could find some more water that would be productive for us. It sure didn’t take long to get into some more good fish. We were running the same program as the day before. We found a few submerged trees that we hadn’t known about before and also did some more contour trolling in new areas. We dialed in some colors that seemed to be putting a few more fish in the boat than other colors, although just about every color we tried would catch fish. Our big fish for the day on Friday’s prefishing was a 27 inch walleye. We also had several fish in the 22 to 24 inch range and caught 4 perfect slot fish that all measured in the 21 to 22 inch range. It was another incredible day on the water. We headed in a little early to get the boat organized and retie all of our leadcore leaders and get ready for the tournament on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning was beautiful but there were a few clouds in the area that looked a little threatening. We didn’t think much about it as they were mostly to the North and to the East of the lake. Shortly after take off we headed to our fist set of trees on the way up the Snake River arm of the lake. We made 3 short passes over the area and didn’t land a fish nor did we see any other fish landed. We knew this area was a popular area and it had been pounded by others on Thursday and Friday. We trolled our way down the lake toward our other spots and picked up a few smaller fish that we threw back along the way. Shortly after arriving at our next set of submerged trees we landed our fist keeper of the day. It was a decent slot fish that measured 20 ¼ inches. Around mid morning we finally connected with an over that we knew we should keep. It was a plump 25 inch fish that sure made us glad we had released some 22-23 inch fish just before that. We now had 3 in the box and the weather was starting to look like we could get wet. We could hear thunder in the distance but it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. We dug out the rain gear and slipped it on just in case. Well it sure was a good thing we had the rain gear on because it started to rain and it rained hard!!! It was coming down so hard that we had to yell at each other just so we could hear. The best part was that during the down pour we landed 2 fish that were perfect slots at 21 ½ inches. This put us at 5 fish in the box and we needed one more over and that’s when it happened. The storm that we thought was East of us had back built and dumped rain on us like you wouldn’t believe and now the lightening was striking the lake and surrounding hills every few seconds. We quickly reeled up, being very careful not to lift the rods too high in the air, and headed for the weigh in trailer. This was a very scary ride in and I wished I had gotten off the lake a little sooner. While on our way in we were flagged down by my friend Robert. He looked like he was having trouble so we pulled over to see what was wrong. His steering had gone out on his boat and he had us pull him to the nearest shore. His partner and him were very glad to see us as a few other boats just passed them without looking. Towing them back to the dock would have been very dangerous with all the lightening so they had us tow them to the nearest shore. We then headed in to the weigh in trailer and tied up the boat. We stood in the trailer with several others for more than an hour. Several guys were weighing in their fish for the day but we knew we had a great weight going and wanted to get back out to see if we could get one more over 22 inch fish and maybe even get another 21+ inch slot fish. After the storm had passed we headed back out. We trolled a long stretch of bank that the wind had been blowing into and within minutes of arriving we had a rod double over. This fish was a big one and after getting her to the boat she hit the measuring board at 27 ¾ inches!!!! What a great feeling. We were thinking we had to have close to 21 pounds and we still had room to upgrade with one more slot fish. We fished hard the remainder of the day but were unable to connect with an upgrade fish. After weighing in at 2:30 our final weigh for the day was 22.18 lbs. This was good enough to win the day by just over a pound and a half. Second place was Nebraska legends Steve Isom and Mike Polak, third place was our teammates Bill Kunze and Dereck Wagner. Congrats guys!!

Day two of the tournament on Sunday looked to be a little drier day with very little wind and intermittent clouds. We were hoping the storm the day before wasn’t going to have a big effect on our fish but we were wrong. The day started off great with the first fish coming to the boat on our first pass. It was a nice 25 ¼ inch fish. We then had a few smaller fish that we didn’t keep and regretted later including a 23 inch fish that would haunt us up until the end. Around mid morning the fishing really started to slow down. Finally around lunch time we were able to box our second fish of the day, a fat 21 7/8 inch slot fish. We knew we had a few hours left to get 3 more quality fish in the boat but things were tough. Finally with an hour to go we boxed an 18 inch fish but were really struggling to get anything else going. As the day wound down we decided to troll our way back towards the weigh in and seen our teammate Jason Tomich on some fish ahead of us. As we neared him we had less than 8 minutes to be to the dock and still had a 5 minute boat ride ahead of us. We had our life jackets on and the main engine running ready to head in. Pete told me we need one more fish and to quickly turn the boat around to get few yards in on this spot where Jason caught 3 fish in less than 15 minutes. As I turned the boat I told Pete we better reel in our inside rods and that’s when it happened. My outside rod doubled over and I handed Pete my other rod. He was trying to get the remaining rods in and I was barking orders at him to get them in, get the net, and put the boat in reverse because we didn’t have time to reel it in like normal. How we didn’t get any lines in the prop is beyond me but we backed up to the fish and quickly netted it. I really don’t remember what happened next but it was pure chaos in the boat while going full speed for the dock. All I know is that the fish hit the livewell and Pete said it was easily over 22 inches. We made it to the check in boat with less than 30 seconds to spare and it looked like everything in the boat somehow survived the chaos and nothing was broke. Talk about exciting!! We knew we wouldn’t finish very high for the day but what we had just done would be great for us in the 2 day total for the Championship. When everything was added up we finished 11th for the day and 2nd in the 2 day Championship. It was a close one but in the end our friends Steve Isom and Mike Polak had us by a couple pounds and are two great guys that deserved the win as much as anyone. Congrats guys!!