Semifinals flip-flop

Six RCL Championship finalists go on to fish Saturday following turnabout at scales

MOLINE, Ill. – Come Friday’s semifinals of the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour Championship on the Mississippi River, the sole constant was utter inconsistency. The top qualifier, Crestliner pro Dan Plautz of Muskego, Wis., squeaked into the sixth and last spot in the finals with two fish for 4 pounds, 2 ounces. The 12th and final qualifier, Lund pro Russell McDonald of Dryden, Ontario, powered into a short-lived lead with a five-fish limit of 10 pounds, 5 ounces.

The remaining six finalists will fish by themselves, without co-anglers, during Saturday’s finals when they start again at zero. Meantime, Friday’s results and McDonald’s charge rewarded his semifinal-round co-angler, Chris Froelich of Maple Lake, Minn., with a first-place finish worth $150,000. (Half of it came from sponsor bonuses for his spring purchase of a Lund Pro-V with a Yamaha four-stroke outboard.)

Despite the debut of inclement weather, a change from sun and warmth to cold, wind and rain, McDonald got the job done jigging in the Rock River, a tributary to the Mississippi, where he believed he was less affected by the front with his technique than others might have experienced.

“The water is so dirty, I don’t think the fish can tell what the weather’s doing,” McDonald says. “For a troll bite it makes a difference. But with what I’m doing I don’t think it makes a difference.”

What McDonald is doing is tossing jigs in shallow water of 2 to 5 feet – repeatedly.

“I could pitch to the same spot 20 times and then catch two in a row,” McDonald says.

And partner Froelich paid attention all the while in order to contribute.

“I learned how to detect a bite better than I ever did,” says Froelich, who watched McDonald for a couple of hours to see how he was holding his rod and working his jig and then doing his best to replicate it. “(Russell) never got mad when I was missing fish. When I got it, he was happy as could be.”

Friday’s fallout

Even though the first two days seemed as if they might have been a prelude to a repeat of last year’s championship on the Mississippi River out of Red Wing, Minn., where pros Tom Keenan and Scott Allar finished one-two, the pair faltered in the semis out of the Quad Cities.

Keenan mustered one fish for 1 pound, 10 ounces and eighth place; Allar, one fish for 1 pound, 8 ounces and ninth place.

For sure the fishing had Keenan and Allar scratching their heads, and still it did for sixth-place finals qualifier Dan Plautz, who caught two fish for 4 pounds, 2 ounces and the final spot in Saturday’s competition.

Perhaps the falloff for some of the finalists was attributable to a 4-degree drop in water temperature, to 66 degrees. Perhaps it was from changing current conditions. Whatever it was, Plautz, who has been polelining (a method of trolling stickbaits that mimics handlining but with a rod), can’t say for sure.

“I can’t explain it,” Plautz says. “I don’t know if they were holding water or letting it go, but the current felt different. There are times when you’ll be trolling and there’s a ton of debris.

“I was expecting a better bite. I just can’t explain it.”

New to Plautz in the finals was catching his first walleye, a perfect 19 3/4-incher, in addition to one 15-inch sauger. That crucial walleye, following two consecutive five-fish limits of sauger, gave Plautz the extra weight needed to surpass the seventh-place semifinalist, Dwaine White of Oregon, Ill., for the last spot in the finals.

To combat the inconsistency, Plautz says he is going to be rigged and ready with all manner of tackle to respond to whatever the river gives up in the finals.

“I’m going to be rigging up other stuff because I’m not sure what the weather is going to be,” Plautz says. “And I’ve been (polelining) with long leads, which would make it more difficult for me to land fish by myself.”

LaCourse’s five-fish handiwork

With the only other semifinals limit besides McDonald’s, Ranger pro Rick LaCourse of Port Clinton, Ohio, did it with his pet method of handlining – trolling Rapala stickbaits upstream on wire line, with a heavy weight, with heavy monofilament leaders and without a rod.

“Handlining is still the best presentation to keep a bait in front of the fish for as long as possible and to trigger strikes,” says LaCourse, who caught 15 fish, seven of them keepers.

But while McDonald’s fishing spot was in the Rock River and Plautz’s in Pool 16 – and Allar’s, for that matter, in Pool 17 – LaCourse was able to score in 17, off the tip of two wing dams in water anywhere from 5 feet deep to 17. Come Saturday, LaCourse says he will even search the channel edge and roam around looking for scattered fish before he pinpoints the depth at which they are holding.

However the day unfolds, two limits out of 12 and heavy rains late Friday does not bode well for a big-weight shootout on Saturday. The sole certainty, it seems, is that one of the pros is going to capture the winning weight, however large or small it may be, and walk away with up to $400,000.

The top six take off at 7 a.m. Saturday from Sunset Park in Rock Island, Ill., returning to the launch at 3 p.m. The weigh-in will then start at Wal-Mart, located at 3930 44th Ave. in Moline, at 4 p.m.