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2003 444 Walleye Tournament, August 9-10 |
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| Strait Line Anglers Club Members; Ron Arnold, Drew Kerr, and Shane Thombs put together a winning pattern and worked their way up to 2nd Place in 2003 444 Walleye Tournament out of Port Colborne. | |
| Captain Ron Arnold with crew members Drew
Kerr and Shane Thombs boated a two day total weight of 59.72 lbs for 8
walleye (4 fish per day) to take second place. Conditions on the big lake played favourable
for Ron's 17 foot Mr Pike Lund and allowed the team to travel over 16
miles to reach decent walleye waters.
29.88 lbs on Saturday put the team into 6th place. But thunderstorms ran through Port Colborne over night which caused some concern for lake and fishing conditions. Sunday morning was heavy overcast skies that produced periods of rain. A light breeze from the North North East put a one foot chop on the water. Ron says, "It was really dark in the morning and with the slight chop we figured the low light conditions would get those walleye's on the move up in the water column and feeding". "In fact", Ron continues, "On Sunday morning it was such low light conditions! We caught two fish on 20 Jet Divers set on the shallow setting. One being 8.5 lbs!". Ron says, "The fish were up high in the morning and slowly worked they're way down to the depths as the sun came out". Drew Kerr remarks, "Action was pretty steady all day Saturday. While Sunday proved to be a little tougher to figure. It took dental work using needle nose pliers to pull the worm harnesses from the back of the walleye's mouths on Saturday, and only the back treble hook was useful on Sunday where most were hooked around the lip". The team took 14 walleyes on Saturday and didn't lose a fish, while on Sunday they boated 7 walleye and lost 3. Ron jumps in, "Speed was critical, we had to keep it between 1.3 mph to 1.6 mph, and we accomplished that by running two drift socks off each side of the boat. My 90 hp Mercury 2 stroke just in gear, can only troll 2.6 mph on it's own. With two drift socks and again with the motor just in gear, we crawled at a speed that didn't even register on the GPS ground speed. We reeled in our fish at this speed and had to run the engine to around 900-1000 rpm to speed us up to 1.4 mph troll to get bit. I encourage anyone that wants to get precision trolling speed to invest in two drift socks." |
Ron continues, "Here's another boat control tip for those who have long shaft bow mount electric trolling motors. Steering the bow with the electric makes is really easy to control your direction, and prevents the common dog leg troll you get when you have a cross wind, hence over-steering the planer boards is virtually a non-issue. We had calm waters during the tournament most of the time, and when there was a chop, we were fortunate enough to troll with the waves and stay on our waypoints, so we really didn't resort to the bow electric thruster. But get a 1.5 to 2 foot chop slapping either side of the bow, it can really make a difference." Shane Thombs explains, "All the board rods had worm harnesses trailing Luhr Jenson Jet Divers. 20 Jet Divers were set on three rods in the morning and two rods in the afternoon running off the starboard planer board. Meanwhile 30 Jets were on the port side planer board and the third rod that ran a 20 jet in the morning was switched to a 30 jet to give three rods in the afternoon running the deeper depths. Lead lengths were measured by line counters reels to duplicate each time we made contact with fish. 300 to 325 feet of line to the 20 Jet Divers worked best on the deep setting to maximize the diving capability. The 30 Jets, however, were set only 200 feet back in the morning and set out to 275 feet when mid day bright sunny skies prevailed".
The worm harnesses that seemed to produce were the dual Colorado bladed style that is commonly used in the Eastern end of Lake Erie for walleye. We experimented with colours and made it a point to never entirely duplicate a harness. Ron and Shane has 6 years of experience working on a salmon Charter out on Fifty Point Lake Ontario with Captain Larry O'Conner. Larry was a master at finding spoon colours that dominated. Lure tape and spoon blanks where the tools to figure it out on any given day. Larry taught that entirely duplicating a spoon colour often shuts the door to finding additional colours as the pattern changes throughout the day. For salmon, Larry would say that there is one or two major colours that work for a period of a week or so. Conversely, knowing that major colours will catch you some fish, finding the minor colours added to the major colours will put more fish in the boat. Major colours attract fish, minor colours trigger more strikes. During prefish it was made obvious that these Lake Erie walleye prefer black and/or purple as major colours and we tried to stick to that with our Jet Divers colours as well as the rear #5 colorado blades. The bead colour and the #4 Colorado blade was our area of experimentation to find that minor colour. For Ron's crew, it happened to be orange (found during pre fishing) or gold. A little bit of glow tape was added to the large colorado blade for better visibility during the dark mornings.
The sixth rod ran a # 0 dipsy with a Renosky Minnow bait using a ten foot leader and tipping it with a half dew worm on the front belly hook". Ron giggled to himself and then added "This took the biggest walleye on Saturday, but didn't move a fish on Sunday, but we had to keep it out for fear that we would miss a big fish opportunity." Drew laughs and says, "That fish on Saturday almost went back in the drink when the net got caught on the hooks in the minnow bait and the ten foot leader off the dipsy, left the fish almost uncontrolled at the back of the boat. But I managed to turn the net over and scope the fish as everyone's heart stopped". "Truly the best part of the weekend was the team itself" Ron proceeds, "It was like running a well oiled machine". Shane adds..."We made regular adjustments throughout the tournament that Drew, Ron and myself formulated together. It seemed that each time we did a switch up on the spread, trolling direction, or even pulling all the lines and running back up wind of the fish, they were all made as a team. Not only that, it almost seemed like we were granted a reward with a decent walleye every time we decided to do a slight change". Ron finishes by saying, "Great tournament and look forward to fishing it next year. Let's just hope that the winds are as nice next year as they were this year".
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