Quick Bites: FLW Walleye Tour Championship, Day 3
2005 Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour Championship
Mississippi River, Moline, Ill.
Friday, pro semifinals, co-angler finals
Young gun … Sixth-place co-angler John Solek is a relative newcomer to tournament walleye fishing, but he’s in the books as one the sport’s most accomplished. At age 70, he only began fishing tournaments about four years ago. It didn’t take him long to make a big splash, either. During his first-ever day of tournament competition, at a pro event on Lake Erie in 2001, Solek caught the kind of fish most pros spend an entire career chasing. “I got in the boat and the pro said, `Do you know how to fish for walleye?’ I said, `Oh, yeah.’ He said, `Do you know how to troll?’ I said, `You can troll for walleye?’ After about an hour-long litany on how to go trolling, he said, `I just want you to reel.'” And reel he did. That day, Solek caught a massive 14.6-pound walleye. “It was the largest walleye I’ve ever seen in competition,” said FLW Walleye Tour tournament director Mark Dorn. Added Solek, “And I’m proud of that one, I tell you.”
Unbuttoned hook … It was another tough day on the Mississippi for championship anglers. Not one limit came to the scale, and a lot of competitors had trouble with lost fish. “Boy, it was an interesting day,” said pro Aaron McQuoid, who zeroed Friday. “We had a fish on in the first 15 minutes. I got him halfway up to the boat and I lost him. Then right at the end of the day, we lost another one. And those were the only two we had. It was just one of those bookend days.” Sixth-place pro Dan Stier came in with one fish, saying he had the same problem. “We had the bites this morning and we just dropped them,” he said. “But I know the fish are there, so I feel really good for tomorrow.”
A better tomorrow … Stier wasn’t the only one with an optimist’s take on the last day of fishing. Pro leader Robert Lampman has high hopes for Saturday, if only because conditions are just starting to ripen for the fall bite. “I think it’s going to get better tomorrow,” he said. “The water temperatures are getting down to that ideal level where the fish will really start to get active.”
Kehl haul … Second-place pro Shannon Kehl admitted that he didn’t fish his spots very vigorously over the first two days. Today, he went after them with a vengeance, however, and had to work a lot harder for his four-walleye weight of 9 pounds, 4 ounces. “It was a long, hard day out there. We just ground it out and got the biggest one at the end,” he said. “We caught it right before we had to come through the lock at (Pool) 14 with about five or 10 minutes to go.”
Quick numbers
33-2: Official total combined weight, in pounds and ounces, of all the fish weighed in by the top 10 pros and co-anglers on day three of the Mississippi River championship.
37-6: Weight of pro Mark Schuitema‘s leading stringer on day three of FLW Walleye Tour competition at Lake Erie earlier in the season. (Yes, it’s an unfair comparison, but interesting nonetheless.)
Sound bites
“We caught everything out there. We caught a G. Loomis rod that was brand new – it couldn’t have been used more than a couple days. Then we caught a few rocks, sheephead, everything but a leading walleye.”
– Co-angler Joseph Fallaw, who finished in ninth place.
“I couldn’t even tie a knot afterwards.”
– Co-angler winner Matthew Hiller, who caught the roughly 8-pound walleye that sent him to the winner’s circle and his pro partner, Lampman, to the top of the leaderboard. So far, it’s the biggest fish of the tournament.