Pelee melee
Second-time competitor Kolb ventures forth to big-fish water in wicked conditions, wins RCL on Erie
PORT CLINTON, Ohio – On a tempestuous final day for the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Erie, the lone Ranger to make the 20-mile run to the big-fish water off of Pelee Island sealed the victory with what would have been a marginal 29-pound, 14-ounce five-fish limit had the wind not ripped at more than 35 mph and the waves not built beyond 8-footers. And had Ranger pro Pat Byle of Hartford, Wis., not swamped his boat and watched two fish swim away.
Competing in his second RCL tourney, Ranger pro David Kolb of Riverview, Mich., spent 40 minutes motoring to Canadian waters of Pelee, but then the wind increased from 20 mph to more than 30 mph, and the conditions seriously deteriorated.
“I said to myself if I couldn’t get to my spot, then I’d turn around,” says Kolb, lured by the 40-pound weights of previous days. “I said I’m going to go for it.”
Go for it Kolb did in his Ranger 621, a 21-foot, 8-inch craft built to handle big water. With north winds and waves at his back sometimes cresting at more than 8 feet on the return trip, Kolb says he was able to run in the low 20-mph range to make it back before noon on a day when RCL tournament directors shortened the day to less than five hours because of the ominous weather forecast.
The ones that got away
Kolb, however, would not have been in the winner’s circle if Pat Byle had not swamped his boat when four monster waves washed over the side of it, filling the craft with water to the console. While Byle radioed mayday, fellow competitor Bob Domek of Hawthorn Woods, Ill., came to Byle’s aid and brought him and his partner back to shore. The U.S. Coast Guard towed in Byle’s boat.
“All these guys would have done the same thing,” Domek says. “I wouldn’t leave him hanging like that.”
But when Byle attempted to transfer his five fish into Domek’s boat, two of them swam off into Lake Erie – two that would have won the tournament for him with more than 30 pounds.
Meanwhile, most of the other competitors had forsaken the 20-mile runs to their spots off of Pelee, opting to fish closer to home or in the lee of an island.
Yamaha pro Shannon Kehl of Menoken, N.D., trolled spinners near the north tip of Pelee Island, a distance of about 11 miles from the launch, when the trek to Canadian waters seemed an impossibility.
“You could stand up when the boat went down between the waves and see nothing but water,” says Kehl, who weighed 20 pounds, 10 ounces for fifth place.
Also opting for Plan B was Lund pro Jim Klick of White Bear Lake, Minn., who motored to the lee side of Pelee Island, to an area known as the Wagon Wheel. There Klick caught a five-fish limit, and many more he released, on spinners to take second with 24 pounds, 9 ounces.
The third-place finisher, Jamie Friebel of Roberts, Wis., came in 1 ounce shy of Klick with 24 pounds, 8 ounces but now leads in the points standings for angler of the year with one event remaining, at Devils Lake, June 18-21.
Zero to hero
Ultimately, in spite of the weather and abetted by Byle’s misfortune, Kolb finished in first with a $50,000 check and a new Ranger boat with a Yamaha motor, earning his co-angler partner, Phil Petersen of Lowell, Mich., $15,000. Kolb also took home an extra $1,000 for running Garmin electronics.
Kolb says his winning pattern was running spinners with night crawlers behind 2-ounce weights and inline planer boards in 18- to 20-foot depths on the first two days, 23- to 24-foot depths on the last two.
All in all, Kolb’s success was quite an accomplishment considering the conditions and scant experience in the RCL, though he has fished a Michigan walleye tour for years. But that, of course, is the upshot of the RCL format when everyone starts with zero on the fourth day – anyone in the top 10 in the finals can quickly become a hero.
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