Just got back yesterday from a week of pre fishing then fishing the Cabela’s Master Walleye Circuit Tournament on Mille Lacs this past Thursday and Friday. I teamed up with IDO Member Nate Gilkey (GrainBeltEyes) and we started pre-fishing last Saturday. My best friend Jay Saunders came up from Chicago to fish with me a few other days (Thanks for coming up Jay!). This week’s report won’t contain a lot of details as I’m heading back up this week to fish the Hunters Point Extravaganza on Thursday and Friday (not that anyone fishing it needs any tips, but us tournament guys don’t like sharing secrets before the event!). This time I’ll be joining forces with IDO Member Dan Fifer (Bigfife). We hit dozens of spots during pre-fish and settled on a milk run of 6-7 key ones that held slot fish all week. The weather was a bit on the brutal side as we had several severe storms and either a strong east or west wind most days. Fishing was great though as we had the good slot fish dialed in all week and felt good going into the tournament.
Come tournament day, we were greeted with calm waters and clear skies. This was a welcome sight at first in the morning as the take-off was at Izaty’s on the south end. The MWC Tournament was running in conjunction with the Cabela’s National Team Championship so there were over 250 teams total. We didn’t have an NTC bid, so we were just entered in the MWC. With that many teams we had to use other accesses and boat in. With calm winds in the forecast, we put in at Rocky Reef Resort for a quick 5 mile run over to Izaty’s. We were all very fortunate there wasn’t a strong wind, as each team had to motor into Izaty’s harbor each morning to check in then go back out and wait for our flights to take off. We were in the last flight on Day 1 so we took off at 8:15 and had to be back at 5:45. While we were heading across the lake to our first spot, I was just hoping our fish would still be there as the pre-fishing conditions were completely opposite (windy/storms vs. clear skies and calm).
We spent an hour on spot #1 and only caught a few in the 20-23 inch range, so onto spot #2. We worked that spot for about 15 minutes before our first fish, and then started marking them like crazy. During the next 10 minutes we had a tremendous flurry of action as we put 5 slots with 3 over 16 inches in the live well. We kept spinning around back and forth over a 100 yard stretch and continued to catch fish but no more slots. Onto spot #3 where in 10 minutes we put another nice slot in. In this tournament you can put 8 fish in the well and weigh your best 5. We felt we had a decent bag of slots at that point, so with 4 hours left to fish, we headed to another area to try for an over 28. At that area, we marked a ton of fish but couldn’t stab and over as we came a bit shy on a few that had the heart pumping! We did get 2 more good slots that we decided to keep so with about 45 minutes to go we had our 8 and headed in early. We figured if we could just weigh a solid bag of slots we’d be in it for day 2. This wasn’t a bad decision as our 5 slots went for 6.5 lbs which put us in 27th place out of 133 teams.
The conditions on Day 2 were about the same. This time we were in the first flight so we took off at 7:30 and had to be in at 3:30. We headed to the Day 1 spot we had the slot fish flurry on, but the fish were not there. We had a slight west wind, so we pulled up and went to Day 1’s spot #1. This time it proved a good move as we found fish again in a small stretch and just spun around and worked over them. In an hour, we put 5 slots in the well with 4 over 16 inches. Day 2 turned out to be a carbon copy of Day 1 as we hit a couple more spots and picked up more good slots and then went big fish hunting with a few hours to go. Again, we just couldn’t get one to cross the tape all the way to over 28”,but we did get more good slots. At 2:30, we had 7 good slots in the well and got one that was 16 and 7/8”. We figured with the bag of slots we had, we’d move up and cash a check, so we decided that would be fish #8 as we headed in and called it a day.
We ended up with 10 fish for 13.16 pounds which was good for 22nd place and a $1000 check. I’ve never fished a tournament with this many teams before and it was a ton of fun. Izaty’s and the MWC/NTC staffs did a marvelous job putting it all together. I couldn’t believe how many over 28” were caught. The majority were caught by out of state teams so it wouldn’t surprise me if they caught them using tactics many of us haven’t even thought of trying on Mille Lacs!
I’d like to congratulate IDO’s Dean Marshall and Steve Vick as they finished 10th in the MWC and 17th in the NTC. I’d also like to congratulate my friends Brian and Abby Schroeder who finished 8th in the MWC and 21st in the NTC. Making the cut to 25 on the final day of the NTC is a huge accomplishment while competing against 253 great teams from across the country.
Next week I’ll share more details after the Hunter’s Extravaganza is over. I will say we caught all our fish this week on Jolly Roger Tackle including a slight modification to one program and we deployed some new weapons that are not online yet but will be shortly.
Best of Fishing,
Shawn Flemming
Jolly Roger Tackle