Fishing at Merritt Reservoir
My partner Dave Rosenthal and I went to Merritt for the two Nebraska Walleye Association tournaments. We arrived at the lake around 9:30am on Thursday and once we stopped to check on our cabin we immediately launched the boat and headed for the mouth of the Snake River. We have always faired pretty well somewhere in that area during this time of the year trolling Hot n Tots and jointed #5 Shad Rap lures. This year however, the water was still pretty high so there was a little uncertaintly whether this pattern would work. We started trolling the weed edges about a mile west of the snake river buoys and it didn't take us long to find out that this pattern was good. In fact, it was almost too easy. We caught a bucket load of short walleye and 5 real quality keeper walleye within the first 2 hours. The bite though really shut off for us in the afternoon. We still managed to catch some small eyes but no more keepers. On Friday morning we went further west in the snake to start. Again, we were trolling the same type of crankbaits along the weed edges. We found three more areas that were holding some nice size walleyes but nothing over 23 inches. We had our 5 keeper fish before 10:00am and from then on we started covering the rest of the lake. We fished the Powder Horn and trolled the main pionts along with Hoffman Flats area. We also caught small eyes in the Carp Flat Area. This worried us a little because it was just too easy to get our 5 tournament fish. We also caught some Musky along the way.
During the Saturday tournament, realization set in for us. We ran to our first spot and you guessed it, our fish were not there! Our second spot, Bird Tree, only produced one small keeper fish. We just kept moving from area to area in the Snake River and finally managed to get our five fish with one of them around 23 inches. We finished 7th in the Saturday tournament. I did manage to catch a nimce 20-23 lb class Musky. That fish was an absolute blast to catch but I would have traded it for an 8 lb walleye.
Sunday morning we pretty much did a carbon copy of Saturday. The only difference was that we couldn't even catch the short walleye. We moved out into a little deeper water around 9:00am and finally I hooked up on a nice 21+ inch walleye. We got the fish just out reach of the net at the boat and suddenly it waws gone. That doesn't happen to us very often, but it did and that took the wind out of our sails. We only managed one keeper fish for the Sunday Tourney. That one fish hurt us in the overall Top Gun program for the year but that is fishing. We are tied for eighth place for the year which isn't bad, but Dave and I are never satisfied I guess!
A friend of mine went to Merritt last weekend and the walleye fishing was real good. He was Bass fishing which wasn't near as productive but his report back was that the walleye trolling bite was really going. He talked to one boat that had caught around 65 walleye trolling in the Powder Horn area. This pattern should just keep going through most of August. I wish I could go back!
This next week another friend of mine and I are going to fish the open portion of the NWT Championship at Lewis and Clark Reservoir. I will let you know how things went.
See you on the water,
Bill
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