SPRING VALLEY, Ill. – Up above its banks with moiling waters, carrying a freight of leaves, fence posts and sediment, the Illinois River is at its most inhospitable during the soggy spring. Nevertheless, despite the intense test of their mettle, the competitors on the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour will have to battle the conditions and steer clear of the brink of despair on the tourney’s first day if they hope to turn in a fish or two.
“The fish are still in the same areas,” says Crestliner pro Dan Plautz of Muskego, Wis. “They didn’t blow out from the dam. And it’s going to be colder and snowing. Psychologically, the weather is going to take 65 percent of the field out of the tournament.”
In the moments before day-one takeoff, the field of 175 teams, pairing pros and co-anglers, was faced with temperatures in the 30s, biting winds from the north and an intermittent rain – the psychological deterrents to potential success in an incredibly tough bite where one or two sauger might indeed separate the heroes from the zeroes.
Plautz’s strategy to combat the conditions is to start the day where he last caught fish in practice. He’ll be working big, bulky jigs for greater size and scope in visibility limited to a couple of inches, then move shallower to find diminished current that could hold a couple of sauger.
Similarly, looking for a few good fish is the strategy of Keith Carlson of Goodhue, Minn. – the winner of a weekend team tournament with daily limits that totaled more than 28 pounds.
“Right now the river is changed totally,” Carlson says. “The water has come up so much. And it’s moving at a pretty good clip, too.”
Indeed, the river has changed totally since the weekend, when a daily limit was possible though precious. Today a sauger or two or three might be enough to propel any angler who has them into the top-20 cut come Thursday.
Or so go the dispiriting pre-tournament predictions that are forecasting far more than 100 zeroes, perhaps as many as 150, come the 3 p.m. Central weigh-in at the Spring Valley Boat Club. Which is to say, at day’s end, the anglers who have the few will undoubtedly be the proud.
Wednesday’s conditions:
Sunrise: 5:41 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 39 degrees
Expected high temperature: upper 40s
Water temperature: 54 degrees
Wind: northwest at 10-15 mph with higher gusts
Relative humidity: 81 percent
Day’s outlook: mostly cloudy with a 30 percent chance of showers