Things have been very slow on the Catch of the Day website so far this year. I am hoping that I change that for the next several months. My spring started by unexpectedly selling my boat and by the time I ordered a new one and got it here, it was the middle of May, but it was worth the wait! This only left me with about 2 weeks to get some hours on my new Alumacraft 195CS before we left for the Cabelas' NTC Walleye Championship in Green Bay, Wisconsin. We also had 2 NWA Tourneys to fish during this time period. The first 2 NWA tournaments were before I had my new boat broke in, so we used my partner's. We always use both boats during the season anyway. We didn't do well in the first tourney at Sherman, but finished 7th in the one at Harlan. We caught our 5 keeper walleye that day by anchoring just east of Coyote Canyon and using walleye flasher jigs below the boat and slip bobber set-ups with plain hooks, crawlers or leeches set up by the willows.

Green Bay was a real experience during the Cabela's tournament. We had about 4 days of pre-fishing on the bay before the tournament started and we needed all of it. This was a lot of water to learn in a short period of time. Of course, we also had fog, high winds and thunderstorms to deal with everyday. Thank goodness for GPS and Navionic map chips for the area. That is the only way we got around. Although we didn't fare very well overall in the tourney (due to us not adapting to transitioning walleye fast enough), I really learned a lot about running my Alumacraft in heavy seas. This thing handled great! We did catch some nice fish also, but they were on a transition from shallow to deep and we were fishing spinner/crawler harnesses with no weight in about 9-13 feet of water all week. The first day of the tourney our fish turned into short little 16" ones and we didn't move out to deeper water until it was too late to get a limit. That took us out of the running for the overall finish that we were hoping for. The second day we moved out and ended up weighing about 19 lbs. of walleye. That was a little more respectable. One thing for sure is that the Bay of Green Bay is a great fishery. I wish we could have had great weather all week though. The people up there are very friendly and I believe they made all tourney fishermen feel very welcome.

I guess there is no rest for the weary. We drove home from Green Bay that Sunday, went to work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then headed to Lake McConaughy for the next NWA tournament. We caught a lot of eyes during practice in this tourney also. Unfortunately, these were small 15-16" long walleyes. We finally started trolling #5 shad raps in front of North Shore and caught some nicer fish. During the Saturday tournament we caught our 5 walleyes all in front of North Shore. We finished in 16th place. On Sunday, we fished the same area and had a nice 21" walleye within the first five minutes. We thought we were going to have a great day! Then the wind came up to around 40mph out of the south. We hung in there on the north side until noon and never caught another walleye. We then ran south to Kelly Bay and hoped to catch 4 fish in the last 2 hours. It just wasn't meant to be. Needless to say, we finished real low on Sunday's tourney.

Well, this is getting long but now you can see that things have been a bit hectic for the past few months. Hopefully, I will get to Harlan real soon and start keeping you updated on what I find.

Hope to see you on the water!

-Bill