Lower Columbia Walleye Club Fall ClassicWalleye Derby
The 11th Annual Fall Classic Walleye Derby Sponsored by the Lower Columbia Walleye Club was held at the Port of Camas/Washougal, Washington on the 15th and 16th of August. Many teams had left as the fishing conditions had changed dramatically during the past week. The water level in the Columbia River had dropped several feet and there were many dead heads and exposed rocks, creating severe boating hazards. Several of the teams found the rocks and sand bars that were completely covered just a few days before. The rocks had taken bites out of some skags and dented a few props and others had found the sand bars and were stranded high and dry. The limit was six walleye only two could be 24 inches or over. The bite was off and quality fish were difficult to find. Most of the fish were small, in the 11 inch to 14 inch class, but several were taken that were 23 to 24 inches. My partner was Roger Rauch, a member of the Mack’s Lure Guide Staff and the best walleye guide on the Lower Columbia River, but the river conditions had changed so much that everyone was one the search for the elusive eyes. The first day was a disappointment to many as not one single walleye was caught over 24 inches. This was very uncommon as this section of the river always produced a lot of big walleye ranging from 10 to 15 pounds, yet in this tournament they were scarce and a rare commodity. Most of the teams went up river to Skamania Island, Fashion Reef and Bonneville Dam. Skamania produced many of the quality fish on the first day and first, second and third place were there and they came in with full limits of nice walleye, but none were over 24 inches.
On the second day only one of the teams scored a walleye that could be considered to be a big fish, and it was only 13.46 pounds caught on blade bait in eight feet of water. This was an honorable mention size walleye for this stretch of the river, but it was the largest fish in the tournament. With the sizes of walleye that the teams were catching, this was a great catch, and congratulation to the team of Brett Sorenson and Mike Zook, they are a great team and one of the teams you have to look out for and not count out at any time.
On the first day Roger and I had a great game plan and began our day fishing on Ough Reef but it was not to be, the bite was very slow and only very small fish were caught where it had been great earlier in the week. We went down river to our second choice spot. This is where we caught a couple of great slot fish and by the end of the day we were in sixth place with 11.61 pounds. Sunday morning was going to be different and we did not go to the reef. Blast off was at 0600 and we went straight down river to our second spot and the first pass we scored a perfect slot fish 23 ½ inches. Four more passes and nothing then it happened 5 fish on five consecutive passes and all in the 22 to 24 inch class and we had our six fish before 0800. We were high grading 23 inch fish by a quarter to nine. The fish were caught on a custom worm harness with a Mack’s Lure Chartreuse mirror Smile Blade. Those fish just grabbed the lure and hung on and had no intention of letting go. It felt great to be in this position and by eleven that morning boats were screaming by us and looking for another place to fish to catch bigger and better walleye. We were in the first flight to return and Roger and I felt good about the day. When the weigh-in was over we had advanced to second place and were in the money with a total weight of 39.69 pounds. If we had only done the first day what we did on the second day we could have done better and weighed more fish. Of course, hind sight is the best, but in reality the reef was our down fall and next year will be another tournament and we will do well with the Mack’s Lure Smile blade again!
There were several teams from eastern Oregon and eastern Washington and one team from Idaho. Even though the bite was poor and the river was down, all of the teams want to return next year for the next go around with Mr. Walleye in the Lower Columbia River.
Roger and I will definitely be back to fish this tournament in the future. This is one location on the Columbia River where anyone at anytime can catch a state or world record and there have been fish lost in the past, in this stretch of the Columbia, during this tournament, that exceeded 20 pounds.
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Pro Staff Winners Circle.
What happened to your bite on Sunday? We made the decision to go up river because we felt the cold front would shut the lake bite off. Looks like we should have went slip bobbering! LOL
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