April has come and gone in what seemed like an instant! Between my birthday, fishing two tournaments, my wife's baby shower, and putting long hours in at work April has flown right by! All of this has led to little time to blog, which is why I am now summarizing the month in one post.
The Fort Fremont Walleye Classic was a fun event to fish as always, but unfortunately the fishing was tough for us. During pre-fishing Steve and I had caught a couple spawned out females north of Fremont, but were unable to put together a solid program for the tournament. We ended up losing two 20+ inch at the boat, since the fish were barely grabbing the end of our minnows. We ended up catching a 15" male also, but chose not to weigh the little guy in since we knew we wouldn't place in the money. Looking back, we should've had stinger hooks on all day, as they could've put those two fish in the boat and possibly others! The winners of the event reported catching pre-spawn fish in the morning while anchored, them switched to vertical jigging in the afternoon to finish out there limit with some post-spawn fish.
Steve and I were caught off guard a little in the first tourney, and decided to spend more time on the water for our next event, the Midwest Walleye Series. Steve and I both fished separately on Friday and Saturday prior to the tournament, and had great success both days catching some nice post-spawn female Walleyes.
On tournament day we were a little nervous however, as warming water temps, falling river levels, heavy boat traffic and sunshine were all variables that could change the bite. This is exactly what happened! We began our day on our best area from pre-fishing, and caught 2 White Bass on our first pass! This was shocking, as we had not caught a White Bass while pre-fishing. We stuck with our pattern and caught 2 Walleyes before heading for our second spot. The second spot ended up being worse than the first, so we ended up on a stretch that we had seen a couple fish caught.
We chimed in with the other boats and continued to watch the boats land big fish after big fish while we couldn't seem to buy a bite! This became quite frustrating quickly, but we ground it out and caught one here. This bite seemed to die for everyone, so we decided to try one other spot with only 40 minutes left to fish. This turned out to be the best move we made all day, as we landed 4 fish in 40 minutes and had to head to the weigh-in.
We ended up taking 4th place with a weight of 14.72 pounds. We were both amazed at our finish, considering how tough of a day we had, and how we were able to salvage a top 5 finish in the last 40 minutes! Walleyes continue to amaze me, just when I think I have them figured out, they throw me a curveball again!
