Play it again?
Repeat performances in doubt for leaders in RCL Tour on Devils Lake
DEVILS LAKE, N.D. – The way Devils Lake is fishing right now – inconsistently and unpredictably – it’s anyone’s guess how the second day of competition will unfold on the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event here. “Anyone’s” even includes the leaders’.
Lund pro Tim Reitan of Sabin, Minn., sitting in second with 27 pounds, 8 ounces, says he is going to go to the well again, to the same tree where his big limit came Wednesday by 10 a.m. Even so, if it doesn’t pan out, he’s not averse to scrambling.
“If that dries up, I’m going to have to find something,” Reitan says. “I have one thing, and I can’t sit there all day and wait. I have to pull some weight to get in it.”
Indeed, even with a king-sized weight for starters, Reitan knows that Devils is capable of producing sacks the size he pulled Wednesday, enough to propel anyone from the top 60 into contention for the top-20 cut. On the other hand, an off day for Reitan or anyone near the top could knock them out of the running.
That’s why third-place Lund pro Mark Courts of Harris, Minn., who weighed 27 pounds, 5 ounces, needs decent but not overwhelming weight to stay in the top 20. Unlike Reitan, Courts is hoping that good things come to he who waits.
“I’ve got to have patience,” says Courts, who is fishing slip-bobbers with leeches and night crawlers on the same patch of trees that earned him eighth in the Devils RCL a year ago. “I have to be in at 3:20, and I’m going to go out and sit it out. All I need is five bites, and they’re the right bites if I get them there.”
Right bites? You bet. After all, it is Courts’ custom to pull a 5-pound average from the spot.
Despite turbulent Dakota weather leading up to Memorial Day weekend, Thursday dawned cold but otherwise kinder and gentler, with light winds and bright skies. Sun, it seems, has a way of turning on Devils Lake, and in a departure from other places in the nation where wind inspires the bobber bite, relative calm has the desired effect here.
Yet, even with improved conditions, it’s anyone’s guess whether the walleyes will appear again in some of the same trees, the abundant trees flooded by record rainfall that has tripled Devils’ surface area, to about 150,000 acres, since the early 1990s. After all, with all that water and all those trees, there’s a lot of room to roam.
Thursday’s weigh-in starts at 3 p.m. Central after the first flights return to Spirit Lake Casino and Resort.
Thursday’s conditions:
Sunrise: 5:43a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 37 degrees
Expected high temperature: 62 degrees
Water temperature: 49-52 degrees
Wind: 9 mph from the east/northeast
Relative humidity: 100 percent
Day’s outlook: partly cloudy; light and variable winds