I went to Lake Diefenbaker on the 25th, and shared a ride there and back with fellow board member Waxy.  I met up with my partner for the tournament, Terry on thursday morning and we headed out prefishing.  The tournament is out of Elbow, Saskatchewan and we end up fishing in either Coteau Bay, by the QuAppelle Dam, or in many of the coulees in between.  The water was very high for this time of year, and had dropped about 6 feet from the weeks before.  The water slowly contunued dropping as the spillway was open to make room for the upcoming spring mountain runoff.  We were able to make it pretty far back in most of the coulees, even farther back than I had ever been back previously.  We went back into one of my favorite coulees, and my first Saskatchewan walleye of the year was a nice 28 incher caught on an 1/8oz Northland Stand-up Parrot color Fireball jig tipped with a 3 inch pumpkin color Berkley Gulp Fry.  We were pitching jigs in a creek channel in 3 feet of water when she smashed my jig.  We also caught a few nice rainbows and pike, but the walleye action was slow due to dropping water temperatures. 

Friday we trailered from Elbow to Coteau Bay, and driving over the spillway the water was just rushing out of the dam.  In all the years I have evern been to Diefenbaker, I have never seen the spillway open before at this time of year.  We caught a lot of smaller males in Coteau, and I hooked into an absolute horse of a fish in nine feet of water.  We followed it around for a bit with the trolling motor, and it was directly below the boat for a bit and I couldn't move it vertically.  I finally got some headway and about two feet of my line was up with my weight out of the water, and the fish went back down and away from the boat.  We were almost to the point where you could of seen the fish, I needed another foot due to the water visability!  I fought the fish for a while longer then poof, my line broke right above my hook and I didn't get to see it or know exactly what it was.  I am 95 percent sure that it was a walleye, but you never know until you wee what you really have on the end of the line.  It didn't behave like a pike at all, but the kicker here is that if that was a walleye, it was probably eleven or twelve plus pounds.  Every year Coteau bay spits out big females and the largest I have seen from there was just under 14 pounds in the spring.  These fish are spawned out females too, so thay are enormous fish! 

After getting over the heartbreak of losing that fish, and being thankful that that incident hadn't happened on tournament day, we had our game plan in place and were ready for day one of the tournament.  We statred out strong and I popped a 24 incher right off the bat right where I lost the big fish the day before in Coteau Bay.  We kept slugging it out but couldn't get our hands on another fish over the 21.5 inch mark.  On the Saskatchewan Walleye Trail, teams can weigh in 2 fish over 21.5 inches per day and three fish under.  You can weigh in 5 fish under 21.5 if you don't get any overs though too.  We got 4 other slot fish as we call them and caught a lot of fish, but didn't get the right bites.  We ended up with 13 and change, and were in about 40th place.  The ocasional bigger fish was coming out, so we decided to slug it out and keep grinding away.for day two.

Day two the bite was a lot tougher, and several teams that had gotten big weights and were in the top ten the day before had a tough time getting their fish.  We got 5 nice slot fish for just over eleven pounds, and ended up moving into 17th place and cashing a check.  We fished with livebait rigs, consisting of a sliding sinker and a snelled hook with a leech .  The snells ranged from 3 to 6 feet in length, depending on the speed and depth of water we were covering.  A single black or red size 6 or 8 hook on the back with a chartruse or orange bead in front drifted or backtrolled between .3 and .6 mph worked best.  We would slip up and down and back and forth on dropoffs and breaklines searching for big fish on the sonar.  We would slow down a bit and work the big arches that we saw on the sonar screen.  Once you feel a tick on your finger signaling a bite, you let the fish swim off with the leech and you wait until they stop swimming away.  When they do, reel up the slack ever so carefully and smoothly set the hook. 

Here are a few pictures of the big walleye on the jig, and the rainbows we caught.  Also there is a pic of the spillway.  Thanks to Waxy for the ride to and from, and to my partner Terry for catching most of our weigh fish during the tournament.  My next trip to Sask will be in July for the Big River Walleye Tournament on Delaronde Lake.  I can't wait!

Chris K

   

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Looks like a pretty good trip Chris. Thanks for the pics.

Chris you might find this website useful:

http://www.animatedknots.com/usesfishing.php?Categ=fishing&LogoImage=LogoGrog.jpg&Website=www.animatedknots.com

Good write up Chris..

Glad to here you boys caught a few and hey atleast you got to cash some kind of check..