Walleye Fishing League Final Episode – Fish-Offs
With our photo finish last week we had an entire week to contemplate our first appearance in the walleye league fish-offs after three years finishing in the middle of the pack. To be quite honest, we had set a goal early to break 100 points, and after our poor showing back in week 8 we knew that we had our work cut out for us. We had to average 10 points the rest of the way and we managed to do better than that with some good luck on a couple of less-than-stellar nights. So when when we reached the final night with a legitimate shot at making the fourth place spot we added one last goal… make the fish-offs. With this in our pocket, we entered the fish-offs with the attitude that we just wanted to catch a few fish and do well enough to sit somewhere in the middle of the pack when we weighed in on Thursday night. The final two nights would feature 8 boats that managed to finish 13 weeks of fishing with some pretty good point totals. These guys all know how to fish, and for any one of them to enter fish-offs thinking they had anything sewed up would be wishful thinking at best. If we were to hold fish-offs 10 times in a row with these 8 boats, you would most likely get 10 different results.
The format for fish-offs is simple; 8 teams start from scratch… everyone at zero. Tuesday night, the boss tells us where we are going. We have no clue ahead of time, but I can assure you the speculating was rampant. Then on Thursday we all finished on Lake Bemidji. The best total weight for the two nights wins… simple as that. Top three places pay off.
Tuesday Night
8 teams showed up on Tuesday to learn that we would be fishing lake Plantagenet. The logic for the choice was simple; every team in the fish-offs had done reasonably well on the lake, so there was no real advantage for anyone. Junior and I were somewhat ambivalent about the choice. It’s not our favorite lake, but we somehow seemed to manage to catch a fish or two on league nights, so we figured we would be able to find a fish or two to stay competitive.
Our plan was pretty basic; pull crankbaitss right away on one of the spots we found fish before just to see what the action was like, then go to leeches and crawlers until closer to sunset with the hope of catching a keeper or two until we could pull shad raps again. For the most part, we got what we figured we would get, slime-ridden razor toothed northerns. After boating three and losing $15 worth of shad raps to two more, we did manage to find one 13 inch walleye. While this would be great on most nights, we weren’t going with the point system this week. Everything was based on weight, so we hoped that we would be able to upgrade that fish later in the evening. This chewed up a bit of time and we knew that we needed to wait a while before the northerns moved out and the walleyes moved in. So we headed across the bay to another of our go-to spots to pull some live bait around. This turned out to be a real test of patience. We marked a few fish, and even managed to get a few bites, but we didn’t net a single fish. We worked deep to shallow and back out to deep again with nothing to show for our efforts. By 7:40 we looked at each other and decided to tie on the shad raps again and throw the dice hoping that we would manage to hit a fish or two. We made one pass along the edge of the point we had been working with crawlers and leeches with no hits, so we targeted two spots; the first was a stretch of shoreline in front of a resort closer to the north end of the lake, and the second was the point we were working when we first hit the lake.
On a hunch we tied on deep running #5s and tried to keep ourselves in about 10 feet of water. The weeds were nasty closer to the shore and there was little chance a shallow runner would ride very well above them. About half-way along our first run I got a nice little whack and reeled in a 15 inch walleye. Bingo. We popped him in the live well and I tossed my rap back out and no less than 10 seconds after it hit the water I got another whack. This time I reeled in a 17 incher. This was looking a little better. With some hope that we had found an active pocket of fish, we made a few more long passes along that stretch of shoreline, but we didn’t manage to find another fish. So we headed back south and started working the line of bullrushes we started on. The weeds were much better along this line, so we went back to shallow runners. The line of bullrushes tapered of to a nice point at the south end and as we passed that point Junior got his first nice hit. Another good 16 plus walleye. We had our four now and needed to find some upgrades. We continued in the same pattern and every time we passed that point Junior got a fish. I was basically just driving the boat and running the net. On the next pass following this pattern he got a real nice smack. By now the sun was well below the horizon and I had neglected to put my headlamp on. We knew he had a decent fish, but I couldn’t see the line or below the water that well. He got the fish near the boat and I saw a flash and moved the net under it but missed the fish. I heard it flop against the side of the boat and felt that sick feeling that it shook itself off, but to my surprise it stayed on and I scooped a nice 20 inch walleye into the boat. We had our upgrade. We made a few more passes and ended up tossing back a couple of keepers that weren’t quite as nice as the fish we had in the live well. With 15 minutes of fishing time left we opted to take our chances with the weight we had and head to the landing.
The weigh-in went quick, and by the time everything was said and done we sat with 6.3 pounds. Nearly 1 pound ahead of the next closest team. Just like that, we were actually thinking we had a legitimate shot at winning this thing. Thursday was going to be interesting.
Thursday Night
Suffice it to say that during the few days before fish-offs, every team was fishing Lake Bemidji trying to find one or two go-to spots for some decent sized fish. While we were happy to be in the lead going in, we knew very well that there were a few teams in the field that were fully capable of pulling in some very good weights with disturbing regularity. Junior had a good buddy of his fishing in one of the boats and they pulled in some monster fish the previous week. The guys that won this competition last year did it by passing the entire field with over 10 pounds of fish on the last night. So our 1 pound lead meant nothing if we couldn’t at least match our Tuesday night total for the finale.
Just to be sure we had all of our spots lined up, we headed out late on Wednesday evening to do a little pre-fishing. We fiddled around with some deep water jigging for a little while before the sun went down and did manage to find one small keeper. But as soon as the sun hit the horizon we headed to spot #1, shad raps ready to go. This spot had turned out to be a nice little late-season discovery and it saved our bacon last week with a nice 18 inch walleye that put us in the fish-offs. As it turned out Wednesday night, it had a little surprise for us on the first pass. As soon as we passed over the first hump that marked the beginning of the bar, a nice fish hammered Junior’s lure. After a brief battle, I netted the 25 inch walleye you see at the beginning of this post. A great fish, but I think it left both of us wondering what the odds would be that we would find another fish like that on Thursday night. Several more passes yielded nothing, which gave us a small bit of concern, so we moved on to spot #2. This mid-lake flat had been walleye central for the last two weeks. It was covered with a bunch of sub-13 inch walleyes, but had some decent keepers scattered around as well. As it turns out, the first pass through one of our better spots on the bar produced another nice smack on Junior’s rap. Another brief battle and I netted a nice 24 inch walleye and hauled it in the boat. Again, very comforting that they were here, but I think we were both wondering if we just had our best night on Lake Bemidji one night too early. In addition, there was very little action on this flat after that fish. Things had slowed down for sure, but we left the lake knowing that these spots were our best shot at pulling in some nice weight Thursday night.
When the big night finally arrived we started the evening working live bait on a couple of humps at the north end of the lake. We were searching deep to see if we could find any decent numbers of fish but the marks were few and far between. We did manage one very small walleye early, but that was the extent of the action. We headed over to the west side of the lake where we found our first keeper the night before. There were definitely some fish on this little hump so we backtrolled it for a while with our live bait rigs. After a couple of minutes of this I felt a sudden tug at my line. Not really a”tap”, but just resistance like the fish just sucked it in and was holding on. So I reeled up a couple of feet to get the rod tip to the water and I set the hook. The weight felt good and Junior went for the net. I wasn’t getting any fight, and when I finally pulled it up to the top we discovered that I had managed to catch a beautiful two pound snowmobile belt. Now on any other night, that would be pretty funny. But on this night, it was anything but. We were half-way through our night with nothing to show for our efforts. While we had managed to find a keeper or two early on our previous outings, we were batting .000 this night. With our patience stretched a bit thin, we once again made the decision to go to shad raps early and take our chances on about three spots we had on the map.
Our first stop was a short bar on the west side that had produced a couple of nice fish on just one of our previous outings. We started our journey from the north end and after about 100 yards Junior caught a 13 incher for the live well. This was looking a lot like Tuesday night. Two more passes produced nothing, so we moved on to the middle of the lake. The sky was still a bit bright and the wind was dying, so the chances of finding any numbers of active fish on this spot were fairly low. We did make a couple of spins around which produced nothing so we headed to our go-to spot further south. Again, we went to deep-runners and worked in 10-12 feet of water. The mojo we had on previous evenings wasn’t there as our first several passes along this structure produced several tiny walleyes and one annoying northern. We knew the calm weather was not helping and waited patiently as the sun finally crept below the horizon. With the low light conditions we hoped that the walleyes would start moving up shallow in search of dinner. I have no idea how many passes we made along that bar with nothing but tiny fish, but not long after the sun disappeared Junior finally latched into the fish we were looking for. He had quite a bit of line out, so he took his time making sure he didn’t horse the fish in too hard. Interestingly enough… a walleye up to about 17 inches will actually come up to the surface very easily as you reel in and will skim in most of the way. The better fish will stay down, and this one was most definitely down. When he finally got it to the boat, I scooped up a 23 inch walleye. We were officially back in the game. Neither of us believed it was enough to win, but we felt like we could use the hour we had left to find one or two more keeper fish to at least give us a shot at a top three spot. But our hour shrank to 45 minutes with no more keepers. We made our last pass over the last hump on that bar and I started reeling in to get ready to move back to the flat bar in the middle of the lake, but Junior left his shad rap out a bit longer to let it pass off the deep side and he was rewarded with another hit. This one skimmed in, but it was a 16 inch walleye and more than welcome in the live well.
We had about 40 minutes to make our rounds on the last of our go-to spots. We had been catching fish on this bar literally all year long and had every reason to believe we could find one more keeper for the live well. About half way through our rounds I finally latched into a fish, but after a little twisting and turning around the back of the boat we were greeted by a late-night northern. 9:20 arrived much too soon, but we needed the 10 minutes to get back to the landing. I was happy that we had found one decent fish to bring in. We knew for sure that we had done enough to at least end up in the middle of the pack, the question we kept asking was whether or not we had done enough to make it to the top three. We had our doubts. When we rolled up to the dock and reported that we did indeed have a few fish, we were told to weigh in last. We found out that Junior’s buddy and his partner had found a very nice fish and three more keepers, but the reports from the other boats were not great. Just the chatter made me wonder if there was a chance. We got the boat strapped down and threw our three keepers in the bucket to head to the scales. We weighed 5.18 pounds… about what we figured. That put us at 11.48 for the two nights. Junior’s buddy and his partner weighed 2.9 pounds on Tuesday, but they found a 25 incher and enough keepers to weigh 8.71 this night to put them at 11.61 over all… nipping us by basically 3 ounces. As it turns out, those were the top two weights for the week. The third place team actually blanked on Tuesday night, but hauled in over 9 pounds of fish this night to pull off a third place finish.
I can report that the disappointment… if you can call it that… lasted about two seconds. We were close, but those two earned their win with a great night. They are both great kids who earned their spot in the fish-offs with some great fishing all summer. We hoped for a good showing and managed exactly that. We left ourselves a little room for improvement next year, and so we are already planning how we are going to invest our second place money, but you’ll have to stay tuned to find that out. September is coming and with it some of the best big walleye fishing of the year.
Written well and entertaining to the end.
Thanks. It was definitely a blast!
Very good article and very well written. Very nice walleye to!
OMG I cannot believe I was riveted by a FISHING STORY!!! Nice work. For some reason I was totally stressed wondering how it was going to end…congrats on your results.
Thanks… and Happy Birthday!