Thread: Report Card*

Report card... Like what I did there? Switched it up a little bit on ya Danny!

One thing is for sure, you can count on me chasing walleyes at least once per week at this time of year. For me, it is all about mastering a craft. The more time I spend on the water, fishing different baits, finding different areas, the better I become. It greatly improves my tournament chances.

Brian, Abby, and I hit the water around 6:15am. We traveled 4.92 miles on a 351 course out of Sunset Bay Marina and shut it down just over 18 feet of water on the uphill side of a 20 foot depression. Today we decided to target different sections of the water column and see if we could find bigger fish. We trolled a combination of bottom bouncers with crawler harnesses, size number 1 tadpoles with crawler harnesses, and size 9 Berkley flicker minnows.

For the most part, the fish were in the bottom 1/4 of the water column. Our average for the day was up significantly over the last week. Trolling with the wind in the morning yielded the most bites however as the day progressed, the direction didn't seem to matter. I suspect the early morning bite had something to do with the currents from the previous day and it took awhile to stabilize. We averaged 18 inches today with the biggest walleye being a hair over 24 inches. We did catch a few white bass, a couple small catfish (Brian got barbed when he decided to try to give it a double back flip back into the water). The Korean judges deducted significantly for the splash but he did get style points for the bleeding!

Abby did manage this 13.5 inch perch (1/2 inch shy of a Master angler)
Although limits of fish are not important to me, I did manage to keep my perfect record by keeping another limit of walleyes. Of my eight trips for the year, I've managed to keep 160 fish. I think I am well over 300 of total walleyes caught in those 8 trips.

Great report Rich.