Final fury
Nasty weather, backup plans expected for RCL Tour wrapup on Devils Lake
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – Weather forecasts are notoriously unreliable, and Saturday’s best-case scenario for the 10 finalists in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour on Devils Lake is that the intimidating predictions don’t pan out.
Severe thunderstorms and high winds are expected to hit the Devils Lake area by late morning, giving the pros pause and making them consider Plan B.
“If the wind blows, I’m done,” says third-place finalist Jerry Hein, a Lund pro from Stillwater, Minn. “If you get more than a one-foot spot where I’m bobber fishing, you’re done. If the wind comes out of the south, I’m OK. But if I can’t fish my spot, I’ll go hit the points and go for 20 pounds.”
Twenty pounds would be enough for a very respectable finish for Hein but not likely enough to catch leader Bruce Hill of Forest Lake, Minn., who leads the rest of the top five finalists by between 5 pounds and 7 pounds.
Even if Hill manages a fair-to-middling limit, all others are going to have to play catch-up.
“With the lead I have,” Hill says, “I have a small-fish spot where I can get out of the wind.”
Meanwhile, Crestliner pro Shannon Kehl of Menoken, N.D., is trying to play catch-up due to his 6-pound, 2-ounce deficit in finals where the third day’s weight carries over to Saturday. Even so, Kehl is undaunted by the day’s prospects.
“I hope it blows 50 mph because I’m going to be tucked way back in a bay,” Kehl says.
Same thing for seventh-place Crestliner pro Jeff Koester of Brookville, Ind., who is now in the running in the Angler of the Year race after a 41st-place finish on the Illinois River and a 28th on Lake Erie in the first two tournaments of the year.
Koester says he plans to return to the last spot he fished Friday, where he caught eight fish in the last hour. He also plans to fish slip bobbers with leeches on pink jigs, a color that not only works great on Devils but is also a favorite of his daughter’s. (The color choice is partly a gesture on his part to gladden his daughter’s heart.)
“With the way the wind’s going to blow, it’s not going to affect me,” says Koester, who will slide his boat over precarious shallows into a back bay before the water drops off to the 7 feet he’ll fish. “If it blows like it’s supposed to blow, I’m going to live and die there.”
High on Koester’s mind is a limit to amass the points needed for the Angler of the Year race. So is the weather for him and, of course, for everyone else.
The final-day weigh-in starts at 3 p.m. at the Wal-Mart, 210 Highway 2 West, in Devils Lake.
Saturday’s conditions:
Sunrise: 5:41 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 57 degrees
Expected high temperature: 63 degrees
Water temperature: 50-54 degrees
Wind: east-southeast at 20 mph
Relative humidity: 72 percent
Day’s outlook: becoming windy; scattered thunderstorms, then occasional thunderstorms with heavy rainfall in the afternoon; some thunderstorms may be sever; southeast winds 20-30 mph