Quick Bites: Walleye Tour Championship, Day 1

2008 Walmart FLW Walleye Tour Championship

Bismarck, N.D.

Opening round, Wednesday

Like most pro anglers, Tom Keenan of Hatley, Wis., knows exactly how he wants to present lures to fish. When trolling, a precise presentation is dependent on having just the right amount of line out behind the boat, and Keenan had determined that on day one of the 2008 FLW Walleye Tour Championship that 75 to 80 feet was the right amount. So what did his co-angler, Terry Etzkorn of Pierre, S.D., do? He let out 73 feet of line. “He said, `I’m putting out 73 because that’s how old I am,'” Keenan said. Etzkorn immediately caught two nice fish, which helped the duo to a total weight of 14 pounds, 5 ounces, good for 10th place. “It was the wrong amount of line, but what the hell? You never mess with the godfather,” Keenan said later. “What a good dude. He can fish with me anytime, anyplace, anywhere.”

Pro angler Rock McGillivary of Watertown, S.D., finished day one in last place, but unlike the other 52 pros at the tournament, he already has his deer. Unfortunately, McGillivary got it while driving down state road 1804. “I hunt in South Dakota and Alberta, but I wasn’t expecting to get one here,” McGillivary said two days after hitting a deer with his truck while driving back to Bismarck after practice. “I knew somebody would hit one before the week was over. Everybody was driving to Beaver Bay from town, and it’s 60 miles of winding road through agriculture country. Everybody drives at the time deer are moving.” The big doe crunched both doors and the box panel on the driver’s side of McGillivary’s truck.

“At least I can still use the driver’s door,” he said. “Could you imagine climbing over the console all week? Or having you and your co-angler getting in the same door? Good thing it didn’t hit the boat. There probably would be stress cracks in the glass.”

Everybody agreed the bite on day one of the championship was not what it had been during practice, which made smart decisions on which fish to keep all-important. Pro Chad Schilling of Akaska, S.D., and his co-angler, Jerry Miller of Lowell, Ind., almost lived to regret the first release of the day. “We caught a 19-incher right way,” Schilling said. “That would have been a little one yesterday. But it was before we realized the bite was dead. Catch that fish at 10 and obviously he would have gone in the box, but we caught him early and made the wrong decision. There are probably 20 other guys who did the same thing. That’s what this game is all about.” Schilling and Miler rallied to catch four fish measuring 23, 21, 20 and 19 inches. They could have weighed five, so releasing that 19-incher might come back to haunt them. “We would have over 16 pounds,” Schilling said. “Not only that, but I made another big mistake and came in four minutes late. That cost us another 4 pounds. You’ll make mistakes, and I made them all today. It hurts. But we’ll get over it tomorrow.”

Co-angler Richard Ness of Ruthton, Minn., finished the qualifying season in 55th place, which left him as an alternate for the championship. But Ness got the call he was hoping to get Tuesday. He just wishes it had come a bit earlier in the day. “Sonny (Reynolds, tour director) called me about 5 o’clock and asked if I wanted to fish,” Ness said. “I asked him what time I had to be there. He said as long as I was here in the morning. I said I’ll be there. We left home at 6 o’clock and got here at 12:30 in the morning.” Ness finished day one in 43rd place and is looking forward to a good night’s sleep before hitting the water again Thursday.

So why is the entire 54-boat field at the championship fishing within a few miles of the North Dakota-South Dakota border? Because that’s where the weigh fish are, as explained by pro Mark Courts of Harris, Minn., who finished day one in 34th place with 10 pounds, 11 ounces. “Those shad-fed fish are in transition from (Lake Oahe) to the river, and what’s happening is they school in staging areas. If you hit a new school of fish moving up the river, you can weigh 25 pounds. That’s really what everbody had their mind set at: 18 to 25 pounds a day. But today they just weren’t there. We just haven’t had the weather yet to get the migration going.”

There’s bad luck in the form of losing a nice walleye at the boat. Then there’s the kind of bad luck experienced by pro Troy Walwood of Grand Haven, Mich., who alternated prefishing with trips to the emergency room at a hospital in Bismarck. “Before I came out, I went bluegill fishing,” Walwood said. “I reached down to grab a rod and felt a sharp little pain. I looked at my finger and saw a little red spot. Well, the next day my finger was huge. I went to the doctor and he shot me full of antibiotics. I came out here Thursday, and by Saturday noon I was heading to the emergency room.” Walwood said he isn’t sure what kind of spider bit him. He is sure, however, that he never wants to see another spider of any kind. “It’s unbelievably painful,” he said. “But these people at the hospital here really know what they’re doing.”