Smaller Walleyes Hida at Lida

   It is rare that fishermen tell you that they can’t catch walleyes small enough!  But that seemed to be the case at Lake Lida this past weekend.  It appeared that plenty of teams were on to fish, but just not the right fish.  Most everyone was struggling to find fish that were outside of the newly enacted 17” to 26” protected slot.  An abundance of 18” to 22” walleyes were available and biting relatively well on a variety of presentations.  Oh what could have been!  Still, half the tournament field would bring walleyes to the scale, just not in the numbers we could have seen at this event.  Even though the minimum size limit had been dropped to 14” for this event, it seemed little to matter as the 14” – 17” walleyes proved to be elusive and the 26” plus variety were non existent.

   Live bait rigs once again proved to be the winning formula.  Dave Andersen from Amery, WI and partner Jeff Solum from Alexandria, had little time to prefish as they had been competing in the annual Wave Wackers tournament on Mille Lacs both Thursday and Friday, but that seemed to matter little as they picked out a main lake bar on North Lida and dropped down live bait rigs tipped with leeches and redtails for the win.  Andersen and Solum captured 4 walleyes in the 14” – 17” slot for 4.06 lbs to take home the $2,500.00 first place check and plaques.  Dave and Jeff were also fishing out of a Warrior Boat, making them eligible for an additional $1,000.00 cash from Warrior’s Cash Tournament High Achievers Awards program.  Less than ½ pound behind, but with one less fish were Bryan Winterfeldt from Dassel and Darrin Herd from Hutchinson with 3.69 lbs, good enough to land the 2^nd place check for $1,500.00 and a pair of plaques.  Only 15/100ths of a pound behind them were Team Kosbab, Jerry from Zimmerman and son Shawn from Morris with 3 fish weighing 3.54 lbs.  Team Kosbab took home plaques and a 3^rd place check for $1,250.

   Big Fish honors went unclaimed, as we had no walleyes over the 26” protected slot size.  The big fish pot will be carried over to Lake Reno next month were there will be plenty of big fish to sort through.

   Dave Andersen and Jeff Solum didn’t have to go far to find their fish.  The pair motored their 2090 BT Warrior out to the main lake bar off of Clay Point, just to the southwest of Loghaven Resort, where their locater began to mark fish in 20’ – 24’ of water.  Dave and Jeff pulled live bait rigs with fluorescent red Gamakatsu hooks tipped with leeches and redtails.  There was a moderate westerly breeze in the morning until about 11:00am after which it began to lay down to relatively calm conditions.  The walleyes activity level seemed to wane with the wind as most teams reported catching their fish before the breeze subsided.  Dave and Jeff were no different as they caught 12 walleyes, mostly in the morning.  They would have 3 legal fish in the box in the morning with number 4 coming in the last hour of the tournament.  There were some very short weeds, barely noticeable on the graph, which may have helped to concentrate walleyes in this location. Leeches seemed to work best for them as they produced 3 fish, but their “big one”, a 15 ½ incher, came on a retail.  A big sheephead would add some excitement to their day as they landed a 10 ½ lber.  Their 4.06 lb basket is the lightest weight to ever win a MWT tournament.

   Bryan Winterfeldt and Darrin Herd, who didn’t have much in the way of tournament legal fish going prefishing decided to start new Sunday morning and it turned out to be a good decision.  With clear skies that morning they decided to fish in 30+ feet of water on some humps in the south central portion of the North lake with crawlers towed behind bottom bouncers.  Without much going before noon they pulled out the “Big Johnson rig”, which they credit to learning from Team Johnson last year on the Trail.  A modified live bait rig with a purple hook adorned with minnows started to produce fish and by the 3:00pm weigh-in they would have 3 legal walleyes, good enough to take 2^nd place.

  Team Kosbab, who had been prefishing since Wednesday, had found only one walleye, a 13 ½ “er, that would come close to the legal size limit during practice.  Jerry and Shawn worked an area known as the Clay Banks in the northwest corner of the lake to finally find the fish they had been searching for.  Using leeches on bottom bouncers with silver blades and a plain hook or chartreuse/orange blades with red hooks, with the wind blowing into their shoreline they would drift from 26’ into 16’ repeatedly to land their 3 legal walleyes, all of which came before the wind died at 11:00am.  They would also land 4 other walleyes in that time, one a 21 ½” and three at 13 ½”.  Team Kosbab would weigh-in one of their legal fish, a .89lber, before 7:30am fearing that it might shrink to less than 14” before the 3:00pm regular weigh-in.  That may have been a good decision, as Team Sullivan finished in 4^th place, only 8/100^th of a pound behind them.

  When it was time to come in for the final weigh-in, they discovered that their starting battery had gone dead.  Dean Kaminski, another MWT angler, graciously pulled them into the weigh-in to beat the 3:00 deadline and then returned to fishing.  Jerry and Shawn would like to express their gratitude to Dean for taking valuable time from his fishing to help them out.  Thanks Dean for a great show of sportsmanship!