I probably won't fish a tournament in weather like that for another 25 years lol. It was unbelievable, 32C and dead calm, not a breath of wind for entire days. The lake was like a mirror, and sitting in a boat was like being in a sauna for 8 hrs, your clothes just stuck to you. It was so calm on Saturday, that if you got in a pack of boats and a few guys were smoking, it just hung in the air like a cloud continuously, you could see the blue haze when you rolled up on the pack lol. Last year at this tournament it was single digit temps and the wind was blowing at a steady 60km/h, gusting up to 90 km/h, the waves were so big that when you dropped into the trough of the wave, you couldn't see the shoreline or the boats around you over the top of them. Go figure...
Prefish was great, but by the time the last day of the tourney rolled around, the fishing pretty much went like the wind - DEAD. It was an interesting bite though, completely out of character for that lake at this time of year. Most of the slot fish were being caught in 15' or less of water, some as shallow as 5 or 6' - in 32C heat, in calm water. Unreal. It went against everything you'd ever read about walleyes, but the fishing was actually pretty good for them at times. The big fish seemed to be deep though, and the fishing for them was SLOW. You could mark them, and know they were there, but it was a lottery basically to get one in the boat. If you managed to pick up one solid over each day, you were golden, two solid overs and you were top 5. Crazy for a tournament where you usually cull overs all day long.
As is always my sob story it seems this year, we managed to catch pretty good numbers of fish, even pulled a 10 on day two, but we just couldn't seem to catch that one more pig that would have launched us into the money. Next year...
Congrats to Wimpney and Keen for the win, putting up almost 53lbs is impressive.
A HUGE kudos to the SWT and Regina Fish and Game League for putting this tournament on, it long hours and a ton of work to overcome all the obstacles that the flooding caused them. They did a great job of not just making it go, but making it go incredibly smoothly.
Waxy
