The 5th and final tournament of the Washington State walleye circuit was held on July 30th & 31st on Lake Roosevelt. This year’s walleye championship was put on by the Spokane Walleye Club and sponsored by Marks Marine & Lund boats. Team Fetha Styx along with 56 other teams showed up all trying to win the coveted title and the top prize of $10,000.
This year’s Championship was based out of Kettle Falls but the tournament boundaries left the entire Lake Roosevelt system open for fishing. With well over 100 miles of lake open to fish, Jeff and I’s pre-fishing strategy was to cover as much water as possible to locate areas that were holding larger fish and then to concentrate on fine tuning our presentation in those areas. Our primary tactics were bottom bouncing crawler harnesses and pulling crankbaits with Homewater Walleye 763-C rods. We quickly found out that all of the larger fish we were catching were feeding heavily on crawdads while the smaller fish seemed to be feeding on minnows. With this information in hand, our primary areas for the tournament were rocky underwater points and rocky shorelines. The Homewater Walleye 763-C rods are very versatile and are extremely effective at pulling bottom bouncers as well as pulling crankbaits and planer boards. We were able to quickly transition between these tactics using the same rods!
Day one blast off was at 6:00 am and after a 20 minute run down river, we started pulling spinners in crawdad colors with small night crawlers in 24’-28’. We fished all 3 of our rocky underwater point areas and had caught a great 6 fish limit between 17”-20”. We spent the rest of the day pulling crankbaits looking for a good kicker fish but unfortunately couldn’t find one. At the end of day one, we had weighed in 11.66 lbs. and found ourselves in 9th place. With three teams weighing in baskets of 16 pounds, we knew that we had to have a great second day if we wanted to have a chance at winning the $10,000 top prize.
Day 2 again began at 6:00 am and we kept the exact same strategy as we did on day one. We were quickly rewarded with better fish on this day as all three of our underwater points produced 17”-21” fish and a pair of really nice 22 ½” fish. Having around 14 lbs. in our livewell, we decide to start pulling cranks to try and find a big kicker fish as we figured we needed to have around 20 lbs. to have a chance of winning. At the end of the day, even though we couldn’t find a big fish, we knew that we had a quality basket of fish and were hoping for a top 5 finish. As we were waiting to weigh our fish in, we started to hear that the leading weight was around 26 pounds. Jeff and I started to get a little anxious as we knew that we had a weight that would put our total really close to the leaders. After weigh-in, our day 2 weight of 14.62 lbs. gave us a two day total of 26.28 lbs. giving us the win and barely edging out the second place team of Steve and Lynzi Romig who had 26.14 lbs!
As with anything that you do, having the best tools for the job always makes a difference. The 763-C Homewater Walleye Series rods definitely helped us catch the fish that led to our win. This 7’6” rod is extremely light and sensitive enough to feel the slightest bite, and yet it has enough backbone to handle 2-3 oz. bouncers or even pulling cranks on a planer board. Having a versatile rod like this in your arsenal definitely ups the odds of putting more fish in your boat. Thanks Fetha Styx!
Jeff and I would like to thank all of the volunteers and organizations that are involved in putting these tournaments on for the Washington State Walleye Circuit. If you would like to find out more information about entering these tournaments or about walleye fishing in Washington, go to www.northwestwalleye.com and check out the forums. See you in May for the start of the 2012 tournament season on Potholes Reservoir!
Tight lines and good fishing!
Rod Hewitt and Jeff Dickinson
I am a retired seattle firefighter, and I know your dad Rod. John Briggs, is married to my sister Trish. Just wanted to congratulate you on all of your wins. I used to live above the potholes reservoir and love fishing for walleye. I now live in Moses Lake. Trish sent me the e mail telling me of your win. I just fished Banks Lake yesterday,, it is now dropping 6 inches a day and Big Walleys said the boat launches should still be accessable for another two weeks or so. Keep up the good fishing and hopefully you can win a National Title. Hal Kershner
Harold, Thank you so much. I hope that you’re enjoying retirement and fishing as much as possible. If you are around during any of the tournaments next year, shoot me an email and we can hook up and talk walleye! By the way, Dad is still working for Seattle and I’ll tell him hi for you.
Tight lines and good fishing!
Rod