PIERRE, S.D. – In a tiller Ranger, working jigs with minnow-shaped soft plastics, local Gerrick McComsey fought the strong prairie winds and stroked a pair of large female walleyes to win the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Sharpe.
McComsey, a contractor who lives in Fort Pierre and has fished the Missouri River since 1995, paired with co-angler Chad Wiskow of Menasha, Wis., to boat a six-fish limit weighing 13 pounds, 1 ounce by 9 a.m.
Early, when the morning’s current was slow before speeding up with increasing power demand and the accompanying flow through the Oahe Dam, McComsey targeted the 14-foot depths. When the current started whisking, McComsey casted the plastics – a brand he wouldn’t divulge in the event the RCL returns to Sharpe – to the edge of a sandbar above the Highway 14 bridge and its slightly upstream railroad bridge.
“The water was way down in the morning because the power demand was down on the weekend,” McComsey says. “The problem was, the wind started coming when the water started coming.
“My plan was, when they weren’t running water, I fished deeper. When they were running water, the fish shifted up into the little current breaks.”
Combating the wind, McComsey ran a Minn Kota transom-mount electric on high speeds and occasionally kicked his big motor into gear to keep up with the current speed.
“Naturally, being from Pierre, I know a lot of the little holes and cups, so that’s a big advantage,” McComsey says.
But McComsey is no one-tournament wonder who plans to take the money and run. Instead, he is fishing the entire four-tournament RCL tour.
Best of the rest
While McComsey practically sealed the deal with a 25-incher for one of his two fish over 18 inches, the other nine competitors scratched and clawed for their best possible weights, fighting diminished current and powerful winds.
Coming in second was another local, Darold Swank of Pierre, with 11 pounds. Placing third was Lund pro Jim Klick of White Bear Lake, Minn. The fourth-place finisher: Yamaha pro Shannon Kehl of Menoken, N.D.
Kehl attributes his tournament jigging success to working shallow areas with less than 6 feet of water, pitching pink-and-white jigs on bright-green Berkley Sensation line – an asset for its visibility and manageability when casting. Although Kehl had used 1/16th-ounce jigs in the shallows for most of the tournament, today he boosted up to 1/8th-ouncers for casting and 1/4-ouncers for vertical jigging. On waters where fractions make a difference, Kehl’s friend and confidant, Klick, edged Kehl by 1 ounce – and $5,000.
The co quotient
None of the tournament pros, it should be noted, could do it without their co-anglers. McComsey’s day-four co-angler, Chad Wiskow of Menasha, Wis., is an aspiring pro who continues to hone his skills while anticipating a jump to the next level. Wiskow says McComsey clearly had the right game plan when approaching Sharpe, electing to try to catch fewer but bigger walleyes that had not yet spawned in the 43-degree water in the upstream reaches of the reservoir.
“I’ve talked to a lot of guys, and the key decision-making comes during your pre-fishing,” Wiskow says. “The decision to pull the bigger fish was the right decision. You could catch 50 a day down south, but up here you were handling a dozen a day.”
They were, of course, the tournament-winning fish.
Call it a stroke of luck or lottery odds in statistical probability, but one pro and one co from the same town, Brookville, Ind., (pop. 3,000) made it to the top 10, though with other partners. Crestliner pro Jeff Koester finished ninth with Robert Davis of Denver, and co-angler Mike Bentz took sixth with Ranger pro Joe Wilson of Rollingstone, Minn.
“The odds of two traveling companions from the same small town making the finals is slim to none,” Koester says. “It’s quite a longshot.”
A longshot? Yes. A coincidence? Maybe not. Bentz shared five days of pre-fishing with Koester, improving his jigging skills and, over the course of the tournament, making a run at the title.
“By pre-fishing, you can hone your skills on the water and learn on what and where the fish are biting,” Bentz says. “I’ve done more jig fishing in the last nine days than I have in my whole life.”
Next up: Lake Erie, out of Port Clinton, Ohio, May 28-31.
Day-four links: