Crow flies
Lund pro Bobby Crow trolls into RCL Tour semifinal lead on Lake Oahe by only 4 ounces
PIERRE, S.D. – Boosted by the benefits of breeze, Lund pro Bobby Crow of Paterson, Wash., bagged his biggest limit to date in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Oahe, claiming the semifinals lead by a narrow margin with 16 pounds, 4 ounces.
“Every time the wind blows, it turns the fish on,” Crow says. “You can fish all day, but then you get a breeze, and you’ll start catching them.”
Specifically, Crow and his trolling pattern were the beneficiaries of a 10- to 20-mph wind out of the northwest, sufficient surface disturbance to pique the walleye activity. Though Crow had lost some of his favorite crankbaits from hammering them off rocks, he picked a new one that, he says, produced even better.
To get the job done with an early limit by 9 a.m. that Crow estimates at 15 pounds, before upgrading with better fish, Crow ran two lines off the back of the boat, two on planer boards, and the outside board caught some of the larger fish that were suspended over deeper water.
But with the 2004 format, where semifinals weight carries over to the finals, Crow has a slim lead of 4 ounces over local guide Scott Pitlick of Pierre. Unlike Crow and most others of the top 10, Pitlick is fishing with bait rigs.
Early and late
The fish, too, seem to come in fits and bursts, starting early and then biting again later in the day.
Seventh-place co-angler Marly Kroona Jr., who fished with pro Reid Widvey of Pierre, says he has seen the same pattern over the last few days, trolling all the while.
“You get a little bit of a morning bite, and it’d stop, and at 1 p.m. they’d go again,” Kroona says.
The cue for the trolling bite on Oahe is the presence of smelt, finger-length transplants from the Atlantic Ocean that were introduced in the 1970s to provide a food source in the Missouri River reservoirs. But while smelt populations have waxed and waned over the years, they are staging a comeback that is spurring a trolling bite with crankbaits in similar sizes and shapes.
And while Crow says he sees a correlation between the wind and walleye action, ninth-place Ranger pro of Bill Leonard of Estherville, Iowa, downplayed the role of the wind because he had to sacrifice fishing time by running upwind to make another trolling pass.
“The wind didn’t have an effect on me,” Leonard says. “The waves are a little tougher to troll because, when it’s calm, I can go both ways. I tried pulling into the wind a couple of times today, but the boat control was a nightmare.”
One big fish
Truth to tell, not a lot of weight separates 10th place from first, with Crow holding a 3-pound, 4-ounce lead over the last semifinalist, Pat Foster of Aitkin, Minn. Going into the finals, all are holding out hope for one big fish to close the gap.
“Yesterday I had 14 pounds, 15 ounces, but I had a player,” says eighth-place Evinrude pro Chris Gilman of Chisago City, Minn. “You have to have a feature fish. I went from 60th on day one to 17th to make the cut. So you never know.”
In compiling a 13-pound, 7-ounce semifinals limit, Gilman says he trolled leadcore line with crankbaits, putting about 25 fish in the boat over the course of the day. Trolling, it seemed, was certainly the order of the day to crack the top 10, with a few notable exceptions.
“Of the top 10, seven are trolling, and two of the top three are rigging,” Gilman says.
Co-angler crowned
In other RCL news, co-angler Scott Bower of Macedonia, Ohio, was presented with the Angler of the Year crown following his two-day Oahe finish in 24th. The title earned Bower a fully rigged boat powered by an Evinrude or Yamaha outboard.
For the finals, with Crow heading out first with a slim lead, the top 10 depart at 7 a.m. Central from Spring Creek Resort, about 10 miles north of Oahe Dam on Highway 1804.