Keenan’s repeat campaign

Last year’s winner takes early lead at Mississippi RCL Championship in Illinois

MOLINE, Ill. – With uncanny similarities to 2003’s Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour Championship finals, the penultimate angler to weigh in on opening day of the second Mississippi River title bout in a row struck up echoes of a year ago, edging out the last championship’s runner-up, Ranger pro Scott Allar of Welch, Minn., who weighed five fish for 11 pounds, 13 ounces for third place. Last year’s champion, Ranger pro Tom Keenan of Hatley, Wis., trolled up four walleye, including a monster, to jump into first place to get the tournament going.

Keenan weighed 13 pounds, 6 ounces for the lead, and one of his four was a 27 ¼-incher just a tad long enough to escape the 20- to 27-inch slot limit that would have required its release.

Precious moments

In another likeness to last year, Keenan opted not to lock through to another pool and stay in Pool 16, where the tournament launches, to avoid wasting any precious moments.

“I hate locking,” Keenan said. “I’ve never locked in a championship. The longer you keep your lures in the water, the better chance you have.”

Last year Keenan also trolled, and he did it again, acknowledging that he is a troller by nature. But despite loads of weeds in the Mississippi stemming from rains within the last two weeks, Keenan says he found a spot during the tournament where he could keep his baits clean and therefore catch fish without constantly fouling.

“There was no crud where we were, so it was easier to fish,” Keenan said. “There’s a current break in there, and it’s forcing the weeds out into the channel.”

Keenan couldn’t, however, muster up a tournament limit of five fish in spite of landing others that failed to meet the 15-inch minimum. Another of the walleyes he landed, a 25 1/2-incher, fell into the slot and had to be pitched over.

With his lead, Keenan says he is hoping for enough weight on Thursday to go forward in the top-12 cut.

“I would think that I can catch a couple tomorrow,” he says.

Troll your own

While Keenan was the runner-up in the 2001 RCL Championship on Green Bay, another top finisher from the same tournament – a semifinalist, in fact – trolled his way to an 11th-place day-one finish, just inside the cut as it stands after just one day. Ranger pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., mustered four walleye for 7 pounds, 11 ounces.

Grunwaldt, it so happens, is tied for 11th with Bruce Gruening of Rhinelander, Wis., who brought in one lonely but very big 7-pound, 11-ounce walleye for his weight. Gruening caught his trolling a crankbait.

For Grunwaldt’s part, he did it trolling crankbaits on leadcore line, but he did some running and locking to make it happen. His first fish came on Pool 16, the next two after he locked through to Pool 14, and his final one back on 16.

Grunwaldt says he is trolling his cranks at 2.2-2.4 mph in about 10 feet of water. At the same time, he had to work ceaselessly to clean cranks with twin trebles because of all the weeds and debris.

“It’s bad in spots,” Grunwaldt says. “My pass was shortened in half. It’s a never-ending battle to keep your baits running free.”

Former champ at it again

Meanwhile, nestled in a logjam in the 7-pound range was Lund pro Scott Glorvigen of Grand Rapids, Minn. Glorvigen, the first RCL Championship winner in 2000 on Green Bay, totaled 7 pounds, 3 ounces for four fish, good for 18th place and mere half pound shy of the preliminary qualifying weight shared by Grunwaldt and Gruening.

Glorvigen took a somewhat different tack in that he locked downstream into Pool 17, where he trolled shallow with monofilament line and Cotton Cordell C.C. Shads – great river baits, he says, for their plastic lips to bounce off rocks and buoyancy to ricochet off them away from snags.

“The biggest thing is you’ve got to be in clean water without weeds and with visibility for the fish to see your baits,” says Glorvigen, who opted for chrome and blue.

He used the monofilament line for its spongy forgiveness in 3 to 5 feet of water around a wing dam. Glorvigen says he also looked for openings in the boat traffic to take advantage of unfettered fish.

Heading into Thursday, a day remains in the campaign for the competitive top 12, and all those who make it will continue to fish in the semifinals on Friday.

Big fish are difficult to come by, as evidenced by just two over 27 inches weighed – one by Gruening and one by Keenan. That could make comebacks from the middle of the standings more difficult, though it’s anyone’s guess how many of Wednesday’s top 12 will fall out of contention.

The field of 219, which was composed of 69 zeroes, 65 single-fish catches, 41 two-spots and 11 five-fish limits, will get after the fish again at 7 a.m. Thursday following takeoff from Sunset Park in Rock Island.