HURON, Ohio — Wind and spray was whipping past my head as I hunkered back in the bean bag that boat captains provide for co-anglers to sit on during the Huron Pro-Am in the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament.
Co-captain Rob Lester, of Chicago, had us on a quick pace to make our 2:45 p.m. tournament deadline in his 621 Ranger boat.
The boat’s well was filled with five fish that would make up a nice bag to likely put us in contention with the leaders, but would it be enough to take first?
“I like our chances,” said co-captain Joe Whitten of Curtice, Ohio. Lester agreed.
When I found out I would be able to participate in a LEWT event — the Huron Pro-Am on May 18 — as part of a Blade “Man on the Water” report, I thought it was almost too good to be true.
I had to pinch myself. I’ve fished most all of my life — since I’ve been 7 — and have always entertained being in a “real” fishing competition with the pomp and circumstance (and prize money). Through the years my friends and I have always held grudge matches, mostly while bass fishing. Trust me, it can be plenty competitive, but this was on a whole different level.
When I recently contacted Bob Barnhart, a Toledo-area LEWT competitor who was also in this event and whose team finished sixth, over the scandal in the LEWT two years ago, one of the things he told me is that “competitive fishing has changed my life.”
I get it. And I was able to see it first hand.
As LEWT Director Jason Fischer told me, this would be a way for me to see “what tourney fishing is all about.”
And also to see where the LEWT tournament stands as a whole after two past participants from the 2022 Championship Event — Chase Cominsky and Jake Runyan — were caught cheating by putting weights in their fish.
I can say wholeheartedly that the tournament hasn’t missed a beat and was fun and exciting with great camaraderie among its fellow competitors, as there should be. But trust me: Every team wanted to take first.
The two pros I was matched up with — Lester and Whitten — are both seasoned walleye tournament veterans in their own rights. In fact, Whitten once graced the cover of the fabled FLW magazine, the publication for the Fishing League Worldwide, which was the world’s largest tournament fishing organization. It has since been acquired and renamed the Major League Fishing.
The pair were especially intent on winning the event.
Being a fly on the rail of the boat, so to speak, while they discussed where they wanted to go first and set up their Lowrance fish finder with the coordinates, built up the anticipation in my gut.
After waiting for a half hour for the tournament’s three flights of the 76 boats, 33 co-anglers, and seven kayaks to line up in the foggy darkness of the harbor, it was finally time. The national anthem was played. The first flight of boats was released. We headed out in the second one — Boat 70, with a 6:45 a.m. start — and slowly moved through the no-wake zone of the Huron Harbor.
Once we cleared the canal of the harbor, Lester opened up the Mercury motor on his boat for what was an exhilarating ride to say the least. Thankfully I have been on a few charters and was not too surprised. Another thing that helped were all the wild rides I had the pleasure of being on as a soldier in various mechanized vehicles during my 13 years of U.S. Army service.
We planned on the fishing the Sandusky Bay area hard, and if that didn’t produce the tournament-sized walleye we needed, then a run to the Canada side of the lake would be on tap.
But the fishing was good where we were at for the entire day, and the fog never really did lift, making the drive to Canada unappealing with its many unknowns.
It wasn’t long and we had landed three nice fish. The day grew longer with a fish bite best described as “spotty.”
By midday, the three of us knew we needed another couple of nice fish to seal our bag for contention to make the top tier, let alone to take first.
We felt pretty confident the fish in the boat’s well were pretty strong but we needed better. Another sweep over the best area paid off.
Boom! Fish on! One was pulled into the boat, and shortly after that the second was landed for a near double to complement our catch total.
Still we were wanting the 28-inch-plus bruiser to seal it. Alas, we couldn’t get it done in the end. At just after 2 p.m., Lester made the call to pull the lines, with Whitten’s competitive spirit still brimming.
“We’re headed toward the sweet spot right now,” he noted.
Never finding the defining fish was the deciding factor between second and first place. The winning team got a whopper at 9.80 pounds to load up its catch to the winning weight of 37.29 pounds.
Joe Papalia and Andy Travis of Warren, Pa., fished similarly to us in that they found success in one section of the lake and never moved more than a 100 yards for the rest of the day. The exception was they were jigging whereas we and most of the other boats were trolling.
“We were fishing where the big fish were at,” Papalia said. “We were in shallow, fighting off the sheepshead and we picking them off with the [Lowrance] Active Target. We were jigging them. We didn’t do nothing but jig, and I think that’s the ticket.
“Our buddies trolled the same area and they did a few passes, but they couldn’t catch a walleye and they got out of there, because they caught too many sheepshead. We had to catch probably 12 sheepshead for every walleye we caught. But it was definitely the right spend.”
But they knew that when they caught the nine-pounder that was “the difference maker.”
“Aw, we were ecstatic,” Papalia said. “Yeah, that’s the biggest one I’ve caught besides in the Fall Brawl. Like, I’ve caught one 10-pounder last year and no nines all summer. We don’t catch too many nine-pound fish, so that was definitely a good kicker.”
Lester, Whitten, and I held onto second with 33.73, just clipping the third-place team at 33.53. Not a bad day at all in the pea soup thick fog.
While I was walking off the stage after we were presented with our second-place prizes, Fischer said, “Mac, maybe you should become a fisherman.”
Hm. I’m thinking ... I’m thinking.
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