High skies
RCL Tour field needs to overcome hot, calm summer weather to crack code on Devils Lake
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – Seldom does weather that is too nice warrant concern in competitive fishing. But in anticipation of Wednesday’s launch for the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Devils Lake, flat calm, not raging winds, and what to do about it was high on the minds of competitors who would be desperately seeking shallow-water walleyes.
“If I get a flat calm day, I’m going to fish deep after I throw crankbaits shallow in the morning,” says Crestliner pro Eric Naig of Cylinder, Iowa. “In a lot of the places we’re fishing, you can see bottom. The wind would help cover your tracks.”
On Devils Lake, a natural lake sans outlet that has tripled in size since a decade’s worth of record rainfall, has an abundance of shallow water with weeds and trees, key fish-holding areas as summer approaches. The pattern has been hot in the pre-fishing period, though it has been waning of late under high skies with little more than a ripple to stir the surface.
That’s why the crankbait-casting pattern – primarily casting perch, blue, holographic green and firetiger No. 5 Shad Raps – should demand not only precision but also a fallback plan.
“Around the weeds, the fish should be holding tighter to the cover,” says Ranger pro Ron Gazvoda of Lakewood, Colo. “They’re not going to be actively feeding, so you’re going to have to find the lanes they’re working. It helps to have a backup spot in the trees in case the wind dies.”
Around Devils’ tangle of trees, the far-reaching forests that have been flooded by climbing water, perhaps the most effective pattern is to fish with live bait such as leeches and night crawlers below slip bobbers, which suspend the bait above the tangles in the fishes’ faces. But while crankbait casting becomes more difficult in calm conditions, the walleyes seem to slip into the shade of the trees and continue feeding.
The RCL competitors who do well after day one will have had to adjust to weather that is hot and calm – downright devilish, you might say, for shallow-water walleyes. We’ll find out later how the field overcomes the conditions.
The 196-boat field returns at 3 p.m. to weigh in at Spirit Lake Resort and Casino.
Wednesday’s conditions
Sunrise: 5:34 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 57 degrees
Expected high temperature: upper 70s
Water temperature: 70 degrees
Wind: from the north-northeast at 6 mph
Relative humidity: 82 percent
Day’s outlook: mostly sunny; north winds 10 mph becoming east late
Day-one links: