Walleye Fishing League Episode 12 – Down to the Wire
We spent the past week doing a great deal of fishing. We focused on two lakes, Bemidji and the little lake we all knew we would be fishing this week. The former produced some great fishing, including the nice 18 incher in the photo to the left. The latter produced mixed results, but we found a couple of spots where we figured we could at least pick up a couple of fish. On the line was our precarious one point lead for fourth place overall.
Lake Bemidji has been heating up with the weather. Our efforts have primarily focused on pulling shad raps on the mid-lake flat and on top of some key humps. We were able to consistently find fish, but still not the larger fish that we will need next week when we finish up the regular season. On the lake we fished this week, our pre-fishing was strictly live bait. Crawlers and leeches on lindy rigs produced several fish, but we were only able to boat one decent fish each of the last two nights we pre-fished. So as we rolled up to the landing we had a basic game-plan in mind. Unfortunately, mother nature had her own game plan. We tried pulling shallow running shad raps over the cabbage for about an hour or so and managed to boat one 13 inch fish. We also caught a fairly decent sized bullhead, a personal first for me on a crankbait. By the time we were ready to change gears, the skies opened up. We battened down the hatches and prepared for what would be an all-night soaker.
We switched over to live bait rigs and moved to the point we had been working the last couple of trips out to this lake. One other boat was working the same area and we were soon joined by another… the team that was one point behind us. This point is no mystery for those who have fished this lake. It consistently produces walleyes, so it was perfectly natural that anyone in need of a few fish would gravitate toward it. So there we all were, chatting back and forth keeping up on the Twins game and discovering just how poor our duck gear was at keeping out driving sheets of rain. We continued our slow backtroll doing circles around the point getting a few bites, with Junior latching into something decent only to have it take the hook. Not sure if it was a cut or a bad tie but the result was the same… no fish. Then we looked over at our competition and saw he was reeling something in. A bullhead, he thought, but was surprised with a nice walleye that went over 20 inches. The game was on. As the invisible sun went down, the rain seemed to drive even harder. By now I had the outboard running and the bilge pump going full-time. We bucked the wind half the time and struggled to feel the line for bites, but as the sun went down the walleyes did move up. We caught a few smaller fish, but two of them were at least measurable to give us three in the live well. We were safely on the board, but needed a decent fish to pass our competition who would surely weigh at least 3 pounds with his nice fish.
By 9:00 everyone else bailed. It was getting cold and we were soaked to the skin, but we hung on for another 15 minutes or so hoping for that one decent fish that never appeared. We high-tailed it over to the north shore by the landing and Junior pulled a crankbait the last couple hundred yards to the landing actually picking up a 12 incher along the way, but nothing more. We loaded up the boat on the wet, muddy landing and I strapped everything down while Junior took our three fish over to the scales. We ended up with 2.35 pounds of fish… good for fourth place, 12 points and the successful completion of our goal for the year of passing the 100 point mark. Our competition ended up in second with their nice fish, enough to pull them ahead of us by one point! So the formula is very simple. Next week we fish Lake Bemidji for our final night of league. If we want to make the fish-offs, we will need to do two points better than our main competition. Knowing how good they are, that could very well mean we need to win next week. So we will be doing a little fishing this weekend looking for big fish. Considering the fact that the last three years we have been out of the race completely by the last week, this is turning out to be our best season. Stay tuned for the photo finish next week!
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