Fishing at Lewis and Clark Reservoir

Nebraska Walleye Trail State Championship Tournament

I had the pleasure to spend August 7-11 with a great friend and great fisherman, Travis Sanger, at Lewis and Clark Reservoir. We were there to fish the Nebraska Walleye Trail State Championsip Tournament.

We spent the practice days pulling crankbaits in the west end of the lake and then in many areas of the chutes. We also ran way up the river and tried some spots that Travis had caught fish previously. It seemed that although we caught fish in almost every area that we worked, the bigger fish were definitely up the river. We new of one spot in the west end of the lake that fish were getting caught also, but we thought that there would be a crowd there during the tourney so we decided to take our chances and run up the river.

Saturday morning it took us just under an hour to get from the take-off at Weigand to our spot 50 miles up river. Just the ride alone was enough to make the trip worth while. We went through a lot of 1 foot deep water and many stretches that were extremely close to shore. Travis never slowed down and did an excellent job navigating all the way. I know the few times that he had time to look over at me all he could see was my smile. That ride was a HOOT!! Once we arrived at our spot west of the high lines, we noticed that the water had risen overnight. This worried us a little because of another time that we experienced high water in a river and the fish left the area on tournament day. We had to work real hard pulling crankbaits all day but managed to get seven bites and five nice keeper walleye. We left in time to get back to our second spot and make one run through it to see if we should work that area on Sunday since the tourney hours were going to be an hour shorter. That run produced one short sauger, so we knew that fish were still there. However, we didn't know what quality of fish they were. At the weigh-in, our fish weighted 10.74lbs and landed us in 5th place for the day. We were only 1.56lbs out of the lead. So we felt we had a successful day.

Sunday morning we talked about whether or not to make the long run and decided since we only caught a small sauger in our second spot, that we had to take the chance on the long run to the river. Once there, we found the fishing very slow. The water was still high and we only managed 2 smaller, but legal walleyes by noon. The northern and catfish were there, but the good walleyes were gone so we had to run back down river to our #2 spot and hope that there were 3 fish to be caught in a hurry. We had about an hour left to fish when we got to our spot and on the very first run I managed to catch about a 17" walleye. After that things slowed there too, but we didn't give up. It was on our last pass with about 5 minutes left and we had about 125 yards to the end of the run and Travis caught a nice walleye. As soon as we netted the fish I headed the boat right back close to the bank to finish the last 50 yards. The boat was right on the point and we were just ready to pick up the rods and go when Travis yelled, "Bill, there it is!!". My center rod was bent over and our 5th fish was on. This fish came to the top of the water right away and we could see that it was barely hooked. I took my time to get it in and Travis did an excellent job at netting that fish. It fell off in the net. Man! What a way to end the tourney. We didn't know how we were going to finish the tournament, but to work that hard all day and not give up until the very end and having it turn out this way I am not sure we cared. We did all we could do and we had our 5 fish to weigh. What more could we ask for!?!

We ended up finishing with a total weight of 19.22 lbs for the tourney. That gave us a 3rd place finish in the Championship. What a great weekend! The weather was nice, the area was beautiful and we finished well in the tournament. We also got to see and spend time with alot of friends and enjoy all the comradery. In my opinion, that is what tourney fishing is all about!

Hope to see  you on the water,

Bill

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