Walleye action begins at 7 a.m. Sharpe
Stop No. 2 of 2008 Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour under way on Lake Sharpe
PIERRE, S.D. – The Wal-Mart FLW Walleye Tour is in back on the Missouri River in South Dakota this week for the first time since the season-ending championship in 2006. However, this time there are two key differences: The 134-boat field is competing below the Oahe Dam on Lake Sharpe, and the tournament is likely to be decided by mere ounces.
When the Walleye Tour last visited Pierre, S.D., in 2006 for the early-autumn championship, the top two professional anglers averaged 12 to 13 1/2 pounds per day. In the days leading up to this week’s event, most tournament anglers have predicted that 10 to 11 pounds a day will likely be enough to make Friday’s top-10 cut.
The waters of Lake Sharpe in central South Dakota, specifically between the Oahe Dam at Pierre and Big Bend Dam at Fort Thompson, are teeming with hungry walleyes in springtime – but the eager eaters at this time of year tend to fall in the 16- to 17-inch range. Pros and their assigned co-anglers are allowed to weigh two fish per day measuring over 20 inches among a weigh limit of five walleyes, but finding the kickers could prove problematic.
Berkley pro Scott Allar of Welch, Minn., knows this scenario all too well. The 2006 Walleye Tour Championship runner-up has been prefishing Lake Sharpe since Friday, and he claimed Wednesday morning before the 7 a.m. tournament kickoff that his best fish so far hasn’t even tipped the 2-pound mark on the scale.
In short, stop No. 2 on the 2008 FLW Walleye Tour is almost certain to be decided by ounces when competition concludes Saturday.
“I’ve been catching a lot of little fish,” Allar said. “It’s tough to get two over 20 (inches).”
Like any top-notch pro, Allar – who has earned seven top-10 finishes on the Walleye Tour and almost $300,000 in earnings since 2002 – is trying a variety of patterns in an effort to zero in on a big bite: jigging, vertical jigging, and trolling crankbaits and bottom bouncers. But after logging three runner-up finishes on tour, Allar has got to be as hungry for a win as anyone fishing this event, so you can bet he’ll try every trick in a river specialist’s book to coax a big bite this week.
Allar and his day-one co-angler, James Muntean of Maplewood, Minn., will have some company 
Wednesday when they make the roughly 30-mile run to the West Bend area downstream. Third-year pro Dean Kaminski of Columbia Heights, Minn., and co-angler John McFarland of Freemont, Neb., also planned to make the trek to West Bend on day one, where the former has found his best bites since beginning practice a week ago.
“Getting those fish from 18 to 22 inches (in length) – that’s going to be crucial every day,” Kaminski said. “Those fish are gold.”
Kaminski has struck gold more than a few times during practice, “mostly jigging with big plastic bodies and fishing bottom bouncers with minnows and crawlers.” He’s found the most success fishing big jigs, including Berkley Gulp baits, colored chartreuse, white or white with a black top. When bottom bouncing, he’s pulling a fairly standard rig with a 3- or 4-inch snell, a floater, beads and a night crawler or minnow (fatheads, shiners or chubs).
“(The bigger walleyes) seem to want the bigger-bodied minnows,” Kaminski said, referring to both his live and artificial baits. “We’re going to be starting pretty deep – 19 to 27 feet of water.”
Many anglers are reporting a plethora of walleye activity near Pierre, but again, those bites are mostly falling between 13 to 16 inches in length – decent catches to fill out a five-fish limit, but not the anchors of a tournament-winning sack. So many in the 134-boat field will be traveling downstream on Lake Sharpe, whether to the West Bend area or beyond, meaning that precious fishing time will be lost in the hunt for the big bite. Another factor in this strategy is conserving fuel: Unless anglers motor all the way to the end of the Lake Sharpe line at Big Bend Dam, as far away as 50 to 60 miles, they are unlikely to find a public filling station on the water.
And if pundits are correct about this tournament, the local factor will go a long way on Lake Sharpe: Former locals like Dan Stier and Robert Propst Jr., current locals like Darold Swank, Doug Iverson, Terry Nelson and Gerrick McComsey (2003 Lake Sharpe winner), as well as other South Dakota-North Dakota stalwarts like Rick Olson and Shannon Kehl were the anchors of many pros and FLW staffers’ picks to do well in this event.
So wherever the big bite is, expect there to be a large contingent of Dakota anglers plumbing the depths 
for their ticket to Saturday’s finals.
Logistics behind tournament stakes
A field of 134 pros and 134 co-anglers will compete in the tournament presented by Evinrude for their share of a $461,500 purse, including as much as $100,000 for the winning pro and $20,000 for the winning co-angler.
Pros and co-anglers are randomly paired each day and fish for a combined boat weight. Pros compete against other pros, and co-anglers compete against other co-anglers. The full field competes during the three-day opening round for one of 10 final-round slots based on their three-day accumulated weight. Weights carry over to day four, with the winner determined by the heaviest four-day weight.
Every angler who receives weight credit in a tournament earns points, with 150 points awarded to the winner, 149 to second, 148 for third, and so on. These points determine angler standings. The top 50 pros and 50 co-anglers based on year-end points standings will advance to the 2008 FLW Walleye Tour Championship.
Local details
Steamboat Park in Pierre will host takeoffs Wednesday, Thursday and Friday at 7 each morning. The final takeoff on Saturday will be hosted by Downs Marina at 7 a.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday’s weigh-ins will also be held at Steamboat Park beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday’s final weigh-in will be held at the Wal-Mart store located at 1730 N. Garfield Road in Pierre beginning at 4 p.m. The community is invited to attend daily takeoffs and weigh-ins, which are free and open to the public.
On TV
Coverage of the Lake Sharpe tournament will be broadcast to 81 million FSN (Fox Sports Net) subscribers in the United States as part of the “FLW Outdoors” television program airing Aug. 24. “FLW Outdoors” is also broadcast in Canada on WFN (World Fishing Network) and to more than 429 million households in the United Kingdom, Europe, Russia, Australia, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East through a distribution agreement with Matchroom Sport, making it the most widely distributed fishing program in the world. The program airs Sunday mornings at 11 Eastern time in most markets. Check local listings for times in your area.
Wednesday’s conditions
Sunrise: 6:23 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 43 degrees
Expected high temperature: 68 degrees
Water temperature on the river: 44 degrees
Wind: N at 10 mph
Maximum humidity: 91 percent
Day’s outlook: partly cloudy with NNE winds at 10 to 20 mph