Today I spent the morning fishing with a couple of guys who make annual trips to some of the better walleye fishing lakes in the world. Bret Larsen and Duane Lutz take fishing trips to Lake of the Woods and Lake Erie every year.
The good thing about having a couple of guys with this much experience in the boat is that they don't need a lot of coaching and you don't have to worry about whether or not they will know what to do when they connect with a big fish.
The bad part of having guys in the boat who travel to spots like that is it can be kind of hard to live up to the experience they've had in those places.
Little ole 9000 acre Lake Wisconsin did just fine today. By the end of the morning, Duane set two personal best and Brett had one new personal best.
With a steady south wind blowing at about 10-15mph right from the start, I decided to go with trolling crank baits over crawler rigs. And it didn't take long before Duane was fighting a pretty good fish. The 22" sauger on the end of the line put up a good fight but Duane was up to the task and soon enough it was in the net. It was back in the lake swimming free again after a couple quick photo's. That was Duane's first personal best of the day.
Less than a half hour later, Duane was again fighting a decent fish. This sauger measured up at 22-1/4 inches. It took Duane all of 30 minutes or so to break his previous personal best.
Surface water temperatures were running at 63 degrees this morning in the main lake. That was up two degrees from yesterday morning.
We were running flat lines in the 10-12' zone for the most part and shad raps were the lure of choice.
After those two saugers, Duane caught another 18" walleye from that first location and after a pass or two with no fish, we started making the milk run.
Only problem was, we didn't find much other than white bass in most of the spots we were hitting.
Bret still hadn't connected with a walleye or sauger but he was being very patient about it. We were well into our fifth spot or so and I was just about ready to tell the guys to pull their lines one more time when Bret finally hooked into a fish. And according to him, it felt like a good one.
Duane pulled in his line and took over the wheel since we were trolling into the wind when this fish hit. After slowing the trolling motor down, I grabbed the net and extended the handle all the way out. Bret got the fish up near the boat but it wasn't ready to show itself and it appeared as though it may try and pass the boat. I inched the throttle up a bit and we were once again staying just ahead of this fish that we could not quite see. This went on for what seemed like a minute or two. It was probably only 30-45 seconds but when you know there's big fish near the boat and you can't quite see it, time kind of slows down. It slows down at approximately the same rate at which your adrenaline flow increases and right then and there, there was a lot of adrenaline flowing in the boat.
Finally, a big walleye rolled on the surface just beyond where the net would reach. That is always the scariest part of landing a big fish. Lots of bad things can happen but thank god, nothing bad happened.
None of us could believe how fat this fish was. It looked like a pre-spawn female walleye but that couldn't be. She was still spunky and Bret had to hold on tight several times while I shot some pictures. Bret released her and she is still out there waiting to give somebody else a battle they won't soon forget. She sure gave us a battle none of us will ever forget.
She measure up at 29" long but it was her girth that left the biggest impression on us. The guys weren't sure, but they thought this was a personal best for Bret as well.
We made another pass or two but no more walleyes showed up and shortly after that put away the crank bait rods in favor of the crawler rigs for the last hour of the morning. That produced nothing but one small crappie.
I don't think I've ever had a better showing from only four walleyes & saugers on a half day trip and I'm pretty sure that every one left the lake with a smile on there face today.
Thanks again guys! It was a pleasure to fish with the two of you.
Boog
