Sauger surprise delivers lead

Unexpected boost pushes Shimota and Eiden to day-one top spot in Walleye League Finals

MOLINE, Ill. – It wasn’t exactly wall-to-wall walleyes, but boater Bill Shimota of Lonsdale, Minn., and co-angler Mike Eiden of New Haven, Ind., managed to scratch out a day-one lead with a five-fish bag weighing 9 pounds, 4 ounces at the Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League Finals.

With most of the field struggling for a single bite, the leaders bagged four saugers and one walleye to notch a 1-pound, 6-ounce margin over the second-place team of Jonathan Shoemaker of Elyria, Ohio, and Eldon Olson of Mason City, Iowa (four fish, 7-14). Shoemaker and Olson had set the high mark about 30 minutes earlier with a four-fish bag that held off a couple of close challenges before yielding to the eventual leaders.

Shimota, who won the final qualifying event in the Walleye League’s Minnesota Division (Lake Bemidji) and finished second in the division’s points race, said he was pleasantly surprised at the quality of fish he and his partner boated.

“I thought I had a pretty good chance of catching five fish today, but I thought they’d be closer to 15 or 16 inches – just barely legal,” Shimota said. “We ran into some bigger saugers, and I had one over 20 inches and a couple of 17s. I would have been happy with just a few of those fish today.”

Targeting sandy humps in an outside river bend close to a side channel, Shimota and Eiden trolled minnow imitators between 1.2 and 1.8 mph. In the dirty river water, it’s difficult to mark baitfish, but Shimota said he noticed schools of gizzard shad along shorelines and wing dams near his spot. “There’s definitely a lot of food in the area, and that could have something to do with those fish being there.”

Of course, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. Case in point, Shimota said that an abundance of shad, along with young-of-the year forage fish, has created a challenging situation for anglers.

“The biggest reason the bite is so tough is that there’s so much food in the system that (the game fish) have a buffet in front of them every day, all day,” he said. “It makes it hard for them to settle for a piece of plastic, but I thought that I could trigger reaction strikes by trolling.”

Day one started slowly for the leaders, who found just two fish in their livewell at 11 a.m. However, relocating did the trick. After moving to the river-bend spot, they put three nice fish in the well between 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

“Bill did his homework,” Eiden said. “He got out there, tried some different things and got a game plan together. He was able to find fish that would bite, and he stuck to his plan.”

With thoughts of spending at least part of day two at his day-one sweet spot, Shimota said: “There are more in there to be caught, and I think I stand a shot at catching them tomorrow. Maybe not five – they could run out at any time, but I’ll just keep working hard at it and see what happens.”

In third place, boater Eric Olson of Red Wing, Minn., and co-angler Jamie Revermann of St. Joseph, Minn., caught four walleyes weighing 7 pounds, 12 ounces. Boater Chad Wertepny of Green Bay, Wis., and co-angler Jamie Nieland of Albany, Minn., took fourth place with five walleyes (7-8), while boater Dan Krukow of Rochester, Minn., and co-angler Aaron Mestad of Deerwood, Minn., finished fifth with five walleyes (7-2).

Rest of the best

Rounding out the top 10 leaders, pros listed first and co-anglers second, at the Walleye League Finals:

6th: Don Marx of Rockford, Minn., and Steve Keller of Beloit, Wis., 6-10

7th: Paul Fallaw of McHenry, Ill., and Todd Wiedmann of Audubon, Minn., 6-8

8th: Steve J. Fields of Rochester, Minn., and Marjorie Monson of Barnes, Wis., 5-12

9th: Dusty Minke of New Brighton, Minn., and Kenneth Dage of Maple Park, Ill., 5-3

10th: Dan Boileau of Romulus, Mich., and Adam Humphrey of Ames, Iowa, 4-11

Day two of Walleye League Finals action on the Mississippi River continues at Friday’s takeoff, scheduled to take place at 7 a.m. Central at Sunset Park Marina, located at Route 92 and 31st Avenue in Rock Island, Ill.