At first glance, Chris Jeanquart’s $75,000 co-angler win at the Oct. 3-6 Wal-Mart RCL Championship in Green Bay, Wis., could be viewed as beginner’s luck. But this wasn’t Jeanquart’s first time fishing; it was just his first tournament. As anyone who has fished a tournament knows, there is a large amount of skill, determination and endurance needed to come out on top.
Certainly, there is a small amount of luck for any co-angler involved in a Wal-Mart RCL tournament. The computer picks which pro each co-angler will be paired with the following day. If the draw couples the co-angler with a pro who has the right touch that day, then they both will probably advance to the next round. But that is where most of the luck stops and the skill level of the co-angler starts.
Team effort
Wal-Mart RCL tournaments are truly a team effort. Before each day of tournament action, co-anglers are assigned any number of important tasks. Most pros put the co-anglers in charge of reeling in the fish during a trolling bite. Jeanquart was no exception.
“I was in charge of running the rods and offshore, inline planer boards on day three,” stated Jeanquart, “It was rougher than rough. The wind and the waves were so strong that the pro I was with (Paul Meleen of Onamia, Minn.) had to be on the steering wheel of the boat at all times so we wouldn’t smash into the rocks onshore.”
Jeanquart was not only under constant pressure, trying desperately not to lose any of the winning walleye, but he also found himself doing a lot of line rigging that day.
“I had to continuously check our rigs, as the shells of the Zebra Mussels would chew up the monofilament fishing line,” he said. “I had to keep tying on new ones on so we would not break off if a big walleye hit. We ended up going through about 20 harnesses that day.”
Enduring bad weather
On day three of the Wal-Mart RCL Championship, both pro Meleen and Jeanquart had to endure a freezing-cold and soaking-wet, 40-mile, one-way trip to the east shore of Green Bay. There they caught Jeanquart’s winning five-fish limit of walleye weighing 36 pounds, 5 ounces on hand-tied crawler harnesses with big, No. 5 chrome Colorado-style blades. It was an extremely slow troll that triggered the strikes on the harnesses, which were, in turn, trolled behind a 1 ¼-ounce bottom bouncer in 15 feet of water.
However, day three wasn’t the only long, cold day for Jeanquart. On his first day of the tournament, he had to bundle up and take the long and toilsome journey with pro James Keckelsen to Michigan’s Cedar River, which is a 68-mile, two-hour, one-way run. With only three hours to fish, they caught two walleyes, weighing a total of 14 pounds, 5 ounces. The catch put Jeanquart in 14th place. Again, crawler harnesses triggered the walleye catch. However, this time the fish that Keckelsen had found during his pre-fishing endeavors were much deeper. To target these fish, the two-man team trolled their harnesses behind 3-ounce bottom bouncers, letting them scrape along the bottom, kicking up mud in 55 feet of water.
No time to spare
Although there was no long, cold boat ride for Jeanquart on day two, there was still plenty of work to be done. Pro Ron Gazvoda had Jeanquart working the rods in 2 to 5 feet of water of the Fox River. There, they had taken three walleye while trolling floating crawler harnesses with no weight attached, letting the line out 100-plus feet behind the inline planer boards.
But as the day progressed, the two were still not sure they had caught enough to make a showing.
“We only had about four minutes until we had to start back, when Gazvoda told me that he didn’t think the three walleyes we had in the livewell would get us into the third day of the tournament. But wouldn’t you know it, just two minutes later, one of the boards went back, and the next thing we knew we had another walleye for the weigh-in,” said Jeanquart. “And it was a big 5-pounder, to boot.”
They landed the big walleye so close to the end of the day that the two anglers didn’t even have time to take the walleye off the hook. It was still flopping around in the bottom of the boat as they returned to the harbor. Luckily, the duo managed to revive it in the livewell. More importantly, that last fish gave them a total of 15 pounds, 5 ounces, putting Jeanquart into eighth place and guaranteeing him a spot in the co-angler finals.
From there, Jeanquart employed a winning combination of skill, perseverance and fishing acumen to capture the title.
As for luck, it seems the luckiest ones were the fish that managed to stay out of Jeanquart’s boat.