Hey folks,
I'm sitting here in my office reviewing my notes from the recent Illinois Walleye Trail event on the Mighty Mississippi River Pool 14. I figured I'd take a moment to share about a rough day that Shawn and I had which ultimately led to a big 0 on the score sheet.
Tournament fishing, while exciting, can definitely get the best of you on any given day. I have fished my fair share of bass tournaments over the years. I spent time in other peoples boats fishing as a "co-angler", or in the walleye tournaments as a team member for the boat that given day.
As far as being the boat captain in these tournaments I'm still very green. And my cousin Shawn was the one who answered the phone when I called last year looking for a partner and said “hey want to try something?” Our first tournament together? The Mississippi River Pool 14 in 2024. I had spent a month and a half learning the water and learning different tactics and dialing in on an area. We milked that area all day for a little over 9 pounds of weight. And a top 10 finish. Hey, not so bad for the first go at it!
As the saying goes I learn more from my failures than my successes. Pool 14 is a slot limit. Any fish between 20-27" have to be returned to the water immediately. We had a couple fish that day over 5 pounds that would have been great for our bag. But rules are rules so they were returned safely to the water. Rules like that are why you catch so many healthy walleye on that body of water. Several teams brought in fish that were over 27" last year. And they all stood in the check line at the end of the day. So planning for the return in 2025 started on that day.
Fast forward to this summer and the Mississippi River was firmly on my mind. Shawn and I weighed in 3 fish in the spring tournament on the Illinois River, and during the second tournament on Heidecke we found several smaller fish, but none big enough for us to weigh on the scales at the end of the day. The summer break between tournaments gave me a long time to think about this one.
As happens in life when you have your mind set on one thing, life has a way of throwing a wave at you to disrupt your thought process or slow you down. The weather in Minnesota and Wisconsin was heavy rain and as the water made its natural progression south it brought with it high water levels, mud, and fast currents. Combined with the day job requiring extra time for various projects and also keeping the lure production going my practice days began to dwindle. Till I had none and our option was to show up on tournament day and be completely green.
Of course we had notes from last year. But rivers tend to change every year so you never know what will stay and what will go. After the last one I had an obsession with wing dams. All the bigger fish seemed to come off them the year before. They were new to me. Something I hadn't spent time fishing before. I struggled learning it and spent winter bending the ear of any river pro I had within ear shot to get their thoughts on how to tackle these fish magnets.
Tournament morning we showed up with rods rigged to tackle some wing dams and hope to run into one of the many +27" walleye swimming in Pool 14. We got the boat launched and sat in the quiet morning darkness making mental notes on the current flow near the ramp as well as water temperature and clarity. A lot of grass floated by as we idled in the current. That would be a problem. Pool 13 up above Pool 14 has a lot of grass in it. And when current runs through and knocks the grass loose it has to go somewhere. Some days are better than others. But it has a direct result in your ability to fish certain techniques or structures.
More boats made their way down the ramp and the flotilla slowly grew as did the anticipation for 7am and the official start of the day. The national anthem was played and finally you heard "Boat 1 Go!". I never fail to get goosebumps and feel that shot of adrenaline when I hear that. We're boat 24 so we have a while to wait. But all too soon we hear "Boat 24" and the throttle goes down for the 100 yard run to our first wing dam. Right insight of the ramp. I figured with no practice it was best for us to get set up and get in the water ASAP to try and capitalize on an early bite.
Settling above the first wingdam and getting the trolling motor locked down and running to keep us from floating over top of the structure. We began a quick succession of casting crankbaits across the face of the wing dam. Walleye love to sit on the front side and the top of the wing dam when they are active. We would make long casts in the current and allow the current to push the crankbait up the face of the wing dam. Then we would cast across the top of it and reel the crankbaits over the top and then ease off on the rod and let it drift back a little bit, and repeat the process.
We moved quickly across the front then repositioned on the back side. Here we began to mark schools of fish. My first audible call for the day. I broke out the night crawlers and casted a jig with a crawler to the back side face and slowly started crawling it through where those schools showed up. Nothing. We worked back and forth trying to get a good bite so we could ID what kind of fish we were seeing and give us a clue. After several attempts and the clock's unrelenting march continuing we moved on to the next wing dam down stream. One thing about them if they aren't biting on one you just haven't found the right one.
We continued on this pattern for a few hours without luck. Finally at 10am with no clues to the puzzle yet showing themselves I told Shawn lets try and run to the flat from last year and see if we can put something together. This is where not practicing really came back to bite us. As we pulled up to the flat we found that several boats were already on it. The fish were definitely there. I had spent a lot of time on that flat the year before and knew what I call the “dunes” runs a ways further up river than where most of the boats were sitting. With the boats focusing on the drop off where the flat drops into the main channel I thought maybe we can make a drift on the top side of the dunes closer to shore and pick off a couple fish. As we soon found out the water levels had dropped enough that where I had planned to drift was only in 2-3 ft of water. Looking at the situation and not wanting to disrupt the teams that were already there fishing, I made the decision to pull up and get out of the way and go find something else.
I told Shawn, “I know another flat down river that fishes similar to this one, let's go check it out.” We made our way through the crowd of pleasure boaters and fishing vessels and finally arrived at my old familiar waypoint on the screen. Starting to feel the pressure I said lets get the trolling rods out and cover some ground so that hopefully we can get some momentum going. Well remember that grass I spoke of earlier? Yeah the first 50 yards we ran both crankbaits were floating on the surface behind the boat wrapped in a salad of weeds from the river. Obviously seeing that this will not work I sat down to examine the map on my screen again. Realizing that this flat sat in a slight outside bend of the river I began to wonder if the grass was as bad on the opposite shore. We picked up the baits and cleaned them off and idled over to the eastern bank for a look. Sure enough it was much cleaner. We dropped the crankbaits in the water again and started our way up river at 2 mph with the kicker motor. This time we made it 200 yards before both baits were at the surface covered in grass…..not ideal but better!. We cleaned them off and started again. Moving between the depths trying to contact some fish to give us an idea where they might be. Unfortunately our efforts were for naught as no fish came over the rail.
My last technique in the bag was drifting 1/16 oz jigs with a night crawler down current. It’s a great way to find walleyes in this body of water and is what we used exclusively the year before to catch our fish. We pulled up to a known community hole that was empty, and made our casts and began watching our rods as the jigs bounced down the river bottom. The current was moving a bit quicker than would normally be acceptable for this technique but we figured it was worth a shot. Finally Shawn hooked into a large drum and a catfish while I landed another small catfish. “Hey there are fish in this river, just have to find the right species!”
We continued to make drifts in different areas of the river hoping to finally pick up a legal fish. With the clock winding down to 3pm and the heat working its magic on us we finally pulled back up to the wing dam to give it one more go before we finally waved the white flag. We repeated the process again this time with a bite, but no successful hook ups. We put the boat on the trailer and quietly turned in our boat number placard for the day, then found some shade to sit and watch the other teams weigh in their fish.
At the end of the day only one fish was brought in over 27” and those two gentlemen walked away with the big check. Several teams that didn’t have the negative mentality about just bringing in 5 fish walked away with checks that day. That was something I severely overlooked. And had I been able to practice I would have been better prepared for or more tuned in to. Guys that I’ve looked up to and helped me get into this game all struggled as well, which told me the severity of the conditions.
Notes to take away from the day. Practice is everything. And I know what you're saying….DUH!. Unfortunately life steps in sometimes and you lose an opportunity. We knew we were behind the 8 ball showing up. It’s not a great feeling and if we can avoid it for the next one we most definitely will. Do better to recognize if the day's conditions are conducive to finding some big fish, or if it's to fill the bag and hope for the best kind of day. I mean there was a chance that we could have hit big and had a really great finish. It didn’t work out that way, but we pulled the handle on the slot machine hoping for triple 7’s and got nothing from lady luck. That’s fishing! That’s why we keep coming back to it. Things could have just as easily gone the other way. At the end of the day we had fun and got to hang out with friends and pick up new tidbits of information that will come back in play in the future.