Young angler on the rise

Shimota’s success continues at highest level

JORDAN, Minn. – In the fall of 2007, Bill Shimota thought life couldn’t get any better. He had just won the Wal-Mart FLW Walleye League Finals on the Mississippi River and a boat/engine package worth $50,000. Two months earlier, the 28-year-old won the Minnesota Division FLW Walleye League qualifier on Lake Bemidji.

But that was just the beginning for the Lonsdale, Minn., native. After he won the FLW Walleye League Finals in wire-to-wire fashion, Shimota started thinking bigger. Sure, $50,000 is nice, but it came against weekend anglers – albeit a highly competitive group of weekend anglers. Likewise, Shimota already had a major team-tournament title to his credit – winning $25,000 at the 2006 Master’s Walleye Circuit event on Bays de Noc in Gladstone, Mich.

“I had been trying to do it for about three years, but I was nervous about it financially,” Shimota said of fishing as a pro on the FLW Walleye Tour. “I wasn’t lined up contingency wise either, so now I’m actually fishing out of the boat I won at the League Finals.

“I was going back and forth on whether or not I should, and finally I decided to give it a try. I’ve had multiple top-10s on the MTT (Minnesota Tournament Trail) and on the WWA (World Walleye Association). I guess I accomplished everything I set out to on the state level, so it was time to see what I could do against the best.”

Gifted angler gives back

On a Monday in early August, Shimota was once again competing in a tournament. This one, held on the Minnesota River in Jordan, Minn., is just slightly less prestigious. And the fish he was targeting had whiskers, not teeth. Started in 2001, the Scott County Sheriff’s Office Catfishing Derby is a way to connect local law enforcement to area youth. Organizers term it “community policing.” In other words, it’s an opportunity to get young people outdoors and to introduce them to one of the nation’s favorite pastimes: fishing.

An electrician by trade, Shimota doesn’t have a law enforcement background. But that didn’t stop him from volunteering his skills, his vessel and his time. His co-anglers for the day were 12-year-old Mallory Glisczinski of Belle Plaine, Minn., and 13-year-old Alex Bush of Prior Lake, Minn. Although the bite was slow, the trio managed five catfish on the day, the biggest being 19 inches in length. The hardest part of Shimota’s day was convincing the kids to keep the stinkbait in the water. Catfish are bottom-dwelling creatures who feed on smell. Constantly reeling and casting isn’t the most effective method – but try convincing a pair of adolescents.

“The New Prague Sportsmen’s Club puts on a kids’ fishing clinic every year. I’ve been participating in that for about five years. Someone approached me at the clinic about being a boat captain for the derby, and I said sure.

“Kids are the future of our sport, and I love to get out catfishing. It’s great for the kids because the fish are usually biting, which means there is plenty of action. And let’s be honest: We’ve got all these great products to promote as professional fishermen. But if there’s no one to market them to, it’s kind of a waste. We’ve got to get kids involved in the outdoors. It’s great for them, and it’s great for the industry.”

That kind of wisdom transcends age and experience. That’s why it wasn’t surprising to see the rookie make the difficult transition from weekend tournaments to tour-level competition.

Four qualifiers, one goal: Bismarck

Before the 2008 season began, Shimota had two goals as a Walleye Tour rookie. The first was to make a top-10 and the second was to qualify for the no-entry-fee FLW Walleye Tour Championship on the Missouri River in Bismarck, N.D. Only the top 50 pros from the year-end points standings advance to the championship, where they compete for a top award of $150,000.

At the season-opening event on Lake Erie, Shimota experienced both frustration and elation. On day one, he boated only three keepers, but they weighed an astonishing 24 pounds, 12 ounces. On day two he managed a limit, but they weighed only 14 pounds. After two days, Shimota was sitting squarely in the middle of the 150-boat field.

On day three, he caught five walleyes that weighed 36 pounds, 5 ounces. It was one of the heavier catches of the day and it put Shimota in 53rd place, just three places out of check range.

“I was on big fish, but they weren’t the most aggressive fish. I guess I just kind of got stuck on those. The second day I lost a few big ones and had to scramble and get limit jigging on the reefs. On day three I just moved to a new area all by myself, and it worked out.”

At the second tournament of the year on Lake Sharpe in Pierre, S.D., Shimota put his years of river experience to work en route to an eighth-place finish and a $7,000 check. In a tournament where a single pound separated 20 places, Shimota was able to locate a bigger pod of fish.

“I had one spot – it was a spot-on-the-spot deal. Every time I went through I’d get a quality 18-incher. Until the last day, I never weighed a fish under 17 inches. That doesn’t sound like much, but it was something for Sharpe. The best part was that my spot was only eight miles from the launch. There were a lot of guys who were running 50 miles or more each way to find their fish.

“That was a neat fishery. They weren’t big, but there were a lot of them, and you could do absolutely anything you wanted to catch them. You could pitch jigs, you could live-bait rig, you could troll leadcore. Personally, I was pulling three-way rigs.”

At the tour’s third qualifier of the year on Cass Lake in northern Minnesota, Shimota finished a respectable 45th. Although he was competitive, he never had the big slots figured out. He employed the feast-or-famine strategy in Pike Bay, where the walleyes were either real big or real small. With only one qualifier remaining, Shimota was 15th in the Land O’Lakes Angler of the Year race. After doing the math, he realized he only needed to catch a single keeper at Lake Michigan’s Bays de Noc, the home of his 2006 MWC win and the tour’s final qualifier, in order to make the championship.

While that sounds easy, the bite in Escanaba, Mich., was sporadic at best. As Walleye Tour Angler of the Year Pete Harsh eloquently said: “The difference between being an expert and an idiot out here is two bites.”

“It was the first tournament all year where after prefishing I thought, `This is the one,'” Shimota said. “We had perfect slots and perfect overs in Big Bay. They were piled in there. I had over 20 pounds in a single pass.”

On day one, Shimota trolled meticulously but came up empty handed. The same result happened on day two and the nerves started coming. Three days of not catching a single walleye can wreak havoc on an angler’s psyche, especially with a championship berth at stake.

“What happened was that the north wind blew out the warm water, and it dropped 6 degrees overnight. There were about a dozen boats in the area on day one, and not a single boat caught a keeper. On day two I tried six different spots, looking for that warmer water, and never touched a fish.”



On the third and final day of the opening round, Shimota caught not one but five walleyes that weighed 17 pounds, 10 ounces. After being literally on the bottom of the leaderboard, the young pro vaulted to 67th place. That put Shimota in 20th place in the year-end standings and firmly solidified him as one of the pros heading to Bismarck.

“On day three we finally got that southwest wind, and I knew I could catch them. Going into day three I knew it would be close if I zeroed again. I was up all night thinking about it. I actually lost a 21-incher early in the morning. I thought if that was my only bite of the day, I probably would have gone crazy. The bottom line was that spot was completely wind-dependent.

“I think as it stands, if I had not caught a fish, I would have tied for 50th with Josh Vanderweide, and the tiebreaker would have gone to him.”

Sept. 16: Bismarck bound

A self-proclaimed river rat, Shimota eagerly anticipates the upcoming FLW Walleye Tour Championship. The event is slated for Sept. 24-27, but Shimota plans to arrive eight days in advance to put together a thorough practice.

“It will be interesting to see what Bismarck brings. I’ve never been there before, but I love rivers. I’m hoping it’s kind of like last year’s League Finals in the Quad Cities. I like tough river bites – you get a tough bite like that, and it makes it a little easier to get to the top.”

Despite a plethora of talented, seasoned veterans like Todd Riley, Chris Gilman and Tom Keenan, the four Walleye Tour qualifiers of 2008 were won by young, relatively inexperienced anglers. Thirty-five-year-old rookie pro John Swanstrom won the season-opening event on Lake Erie. Second-year pro Kelly Klemm, a 23-year-old from Wheaton, Minn., won the Lake Sharpe event. Thirty-five-year old Scott Steil won the Cass Lake qualifier, and 27-year-old Josh Vanderweide won Bays de Noc. Each was a first-time winner on the tour level.

“I’ve won five tournaments in the last five years, so I’d like to keep that going, but it will be tough. It’s been the year of the youth, though, on tour, so who knows? The two tournaments I won last year were on fisheries I had never been to in my entire life. The cool thing is that not too many of us are familiar with that stretch of the river. The only true local is Troy Morris. Looking back on the year, it was my goal to make one cut and the championship. I’ve done that, and now I have the opportunity to make it a great season.”