RCL Tour anglers struggle with travel decisions at Lake Sharpe kickoff
PIERRE, S.D. – In the time of reckoning before Wednesday’s start of competition on Lake Sharpe, a couple of contrasting strategies were emerging. Plan A: Motor 10 minutes, stay close to home and fish all day. Plan B: Journey about 50 miles downstream on the Missouri River, eat up a couple hours getting there in potentially rough waters, fish a couple of hours and hope to make it back in time in the event the prairie winds really start ripping.
Well, what’ll it be?
“The quality of the fish I’ve caught up north, near the launch, has been relatively the same as the fish I’ve caught far south,” says Crestliner pro Jeff Koester of Brookville, Ind., who has opted for plan A. “The second reason I’m staying close is that I’ve caught more females up here. A 16-inch female weighs as much as a 17-inch male. The third reason is I’ll have an extra three hours of fishing.”
Given time to work his fish, Koester says he hopes he can catch a bunch of them – say, 40 walleyes – in order to weed through the small ones and put the heaviest possible 17- to 18-inchers in the box during a no-cull tournament in which every team in the 194-boat field will hope to weigh six fish. The catch? Only two may stretch past 18 inches. The quandary? Keep them or immediately release them when state regulations prohibit upgrading. The best news of all? In this tournament, the competitors will be able to put eight fish in their livewells, in keeping with the South Dakota four-fish limit per person, and weigh six of them. (Consider the extra couple of fish a little wiggle room in the face of the no-cull regulations.)
At the opposite end of the strategic spectrum, many of the competitors will sacrifice fishing time in favor of running time to head south, beyond West Bend, where walleyes in the practice period have seemed slightly larger than their upstream counterparts. And, down there, the fish can come fast.
“Even if I spend two and a half hours getting there, I should be able to get my limit in an hour or two and make it back with plenty of time to spare,” says inveterate Lund pro Mark Martin of Twin Lake, Mich. “I think the fish down south are the right fish, too. In practice I’ve caught 20-inchers and the perfect ones just under 18 inches.”
Ultimately, the scales will tell the tale when today’s weigh-in starts at 3 p.m. at Steamboat Park in downtown Pierre.
Wednesday’s conditions
Sunrise: 6:33 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 47 degrees
Expected high temperature: 53 degrees
Water temperature: 43-53 degrees
Wind: from the northeast at 13 mph
Relative humidity: 90 percent
Day’s outlook: scattered showers likely; northeast winds 10-15 mph
Day-one links: