Walleye anglers looking for bigger bite on Lake Sharpe
PIERRE, S.D. – On a river system teeming with walleyes and saugers, catching a six-fish limit on the first day was a common occurrence, with 125 of 195 teams scoring just such bags. Catching the ones worthy of weight in the double digits, however, was another story.
The top 33 places in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour’s event on Lake Sharpe, a Missouri River reservoir stretching about 60 miles between the dam at Lake Oahe and another dam at Big Bend, are occupied by weights of 10 pounds and above.
Leading them all is Rick Nascak’s killer 15-pound limit, which included one 6-pounder – a veritable whale on waters jammed with small fish.
Even so, competitors seemingly mired in the middle of the standings are still in the hunt to make the top 20 with a big catch in the next day of competition.
Tomorrow the competitors ranking in the top four with more than 13 pounds need to catch six fish of almost any size to put them at the estimated 21 pounds expected to make the cut. All others with fair-to-middling bags, though, are going to have to swing for the fences.
The big hit
A home run was precisely what Rick Nascak of Winona, Minn., came up with in the first hour of the tournament, fishing shallow pockets of slack water in the upper stretches of the reservoir. Following up on a fifth-place finish in last year’s RCL Championship on the Mississippi River, Nascak relied on his river savvy to find larger females in slack water hovering around 43 degrees.
“It’s just like fishing back home on the Mississippi, reading the current breaks,” Nascak says. “Basically what I’m doing is trout fishing in an eddy.”
Similarly, fourth-place Shannon Kehl of Menoken, N.D., focused on shallow water not far from the dam after pre-fishing all but one day far south in the reservoir, where he found mostly inconsequential small fish. Kehl tossed jigs into shallow water to pull the biggest females out of his 13-pound, 8-ounce limit.
“Every time I’ve ever been here, we’ve never fished deeper than six feet,” Kehl says. “What I think happens is that the females that have been up on the banks and slip out to the channels won’t bite. But when they’re in shallow water they will.”
Still, Kehl headed far south to the West Bend area to round out his limit after catching a 5-pounder, three 19-inchers and a couple of 17-inchers within 15 minutes well north in the reservoir. His reasoning: give the fish a break and catch sub-18-inchers elsewhere, since only two of six fish in a limit may stretch past 18 inches due to South Dakota regulations. Kehl says his early success close to the launch – and the lack of other competitors – somewhat surprised him.
“I knew the river gets a lot of pressure, and I wasn’t sure if the fish would be there,” Kehl says. “There wasn’t one other boat there this morning.”
Within striking distance
Tomorrow’s standings could be seriously readjusted, though, if the anglers within striking distance make a move with a slightly bigger bag. One of them is Lund pro Mark Martin of Twin Lake, Mich., who sits in 28th place with a six-fish limit good for 10 pounds, 3 ounces. Martin made a long run far south in the reservoir even though the wind had howled a day earlier and rough water either going there or coming back was a definite possibility.
“It was an easy ride,” Martin says. “I just opened her up because I never knew when the wind would come up and I’d have to slow down.”
After reaching his spot on the bluffs within 50 minutes, Martin jigged vertically with fat-head minnows, and once he found fish, Martin started casting in all directions looking for more.
“Wherever you caught a fish, you’d slow down,” Martin says. “I’d work down to the channel and fish up into the shallows because you knew more fish were there.”
Martin, however, has plenty of company within a pound or so; all of those competitors, of course, want to one-up their first day’s standing with better weight. The top 65 places have 9 pounds or better, which puts the top 20 well within the realm of possibility for almost any team with one big bite.
Thursday’s takeoff starts at 7 a.m. at Downs Marina in Pierre.
Click here for a preview of day two.
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