I'm Number 200--Trophy Walleyes Galore!
For more than 40 years I’ve been accused of putting myself on a trophy walleye pedestal…of talking the big fish game too loudly…of puffing up more than I deserve. Well let me put that whole trophy thing into perspective. I’m convinced I’m the 200th best trophy walleye angler in the world. And I have some facts and figures to back me up. That’s right, I’m number 200!
Though I’ve always focused on big trophy fish rather than numbers, the past few years I’ve really started analyzing my catch record. Between 2019 and 2023—a five year period—I caught 27 walleyes here in West Central Montana that registered over 10 pounds on a calibrated scale. That’s an average of 5.4 walleye per year over 10 pounds. And of those 27 trophies, 5 tipped the scale into the rarified zone of TEENS—walleyes weighing not just over 10 pounds but into the teens on the scale! To folks living in the traditional upper Midwest walleye region that may sound downright unbelievable but hear me out.
Who Doesn't Love a Big Beautiful Trophy Walleye? This 12.36 Pound Lug Hit My Jig in Late December, Just a Couple Days Before Ice Up. Many of Us Trophy Hunters Push the Seasons...Both Early and Late
I’m convinced that there are 200 anglers (or more) catching an average of 5 walleyes over 10 pounds annually (for the sake of discussion, I’m counting other peoples’ measured 30” walleyes as the equivalent of 10 pounders). Look at places like Ft. Peck reservoir in Montana producing multiple tournament wins exceeding 100 pounds—10 pound average—for 10 fish…I believe they had more than 40 walleyes over 30” at one tournament alone in 2022! The anglers who fish multiple tournaments annually on Peck commonly catch more than a dozen trophies during pre-fishing for the tournaments…There must be AT LEAST 30 people averaging more than 5 trophies annually at Peck. Probably closer to 50 people.
Add in some of the most famous trophy waters like the fabled Columbia River, Tobin Reservoir, Lake Winnipeg through the ice, Lake of the Woods, Green Bay, Lake Erie…the list goes on. Figure at least 10 anglers match my average annually from each of those waters. Maybe as many as 30 people annually get ‘em on the Columbia. Is Winnipeg also a 30 angler water for 5 annual trophies? I’d bet on it! Recently there have even been tourneys in Minnesota with 100 pound catches. Again, that’s 10 fish with an average of 10 pounds. And though tourney length-to-weight conversions aren’t provable 10 pounders, it’s clear those fisheries have the bulky fish for SOMEBODY near those waters to catch a few ten pounders/30 inchers a year. Note also that I’m not counting guided clients as catches for the guide. The five annual trophies average is for an individual only, not a full year of client catches for a guide. Someone else can present a basis for judging World’s Best Trophy Guide or some other similar title.
So here I sit, the former holder of 4 Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame Catch and Release Line Class Walleye World Records. A guy who averages 5 ten-pounders a year. A guy who has boated 9 walleyes in the teens in my lifetime. (Probably 10 but I can only prove 9…nothing but a few unlabeled pictures/slides of the tenth one that I swear was 13.5 pounds--shrug). Yet, I’m fairly certain I’m not in the top 100 and would put money on being about number 200 in the world right now. As a side note, I understand my 5 teens on a calibrated scale in the last 5 years is probably in the top 40 in the world since teens are so unusual—even on trophy fisheries.
My Second Largest Walleye Tipped the Scales to 15.51 Pounds. Note the Full Moon Overhead. It's No Secret that Trophy Walleye Anglers Tend to Pay Attention to Things Like Moon Cycles, Water Flow in Reservoirs, Temperature Fluctuations etc. Little Details Matter When Chasing Monsters
Let’s clarify some of my methods. For years before digital scales were normal, the most reliable scale was the Chatillon brass hang scale guaranteed within an eighth of a pound. Pretty much all of us fishing the original Professional Walleye Trail national circuit used a Chatillon. My first teen was a 14 ½ pounder on the Columbia River in 1988 weighed on the Chatillon. The early digital scales (that tended to fail in about a year) typically were set to pounds and ounces. For many years my biggest was a 15 pound 2 ounce lug from the Columbia caught in 1998. More recently, as scales have gotten more accurate, we’ve started using weights with decimal points. My current biggest, a 16.22 pound sow was caught in 2019 on a small Missouri River reservoir in Montana. That big girl was weighed on several scales with the final weight determined by the two scales showing the lowest weight. Those were the only two scales that matched. Just for fun, my 34 year old Chatillon was bouncing 17 ish pounds on that big fish.
Calibrating Your Scale
This is a step every angler should take. Carry your new scale into the grocery store and go to the produce section where they have all those state certified scales. Grab a ten-pound bag of potatoes and weigh it on multiple scales until you have two scales saying the exact same thing. That’s now the basis for calibrating your scale. If two certified scales say that bag is 10.14 pounds, then that’s what it is! Weigh it on your scale and whatever amount it’s off from 10.14 pounds is the amount you need to add or subtract from your figures when weighing fish. My first Rapala scale was .12 light so I had to add .12 to each fish. My current Rapala scale is off .14 light, so now I add .14 to each fish to be truly accurate.
What about measurements? My Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame Line Class World Records were all based on length. I’ve cashed tournament checks based on length. But I only measure big walleyes occasionally when the fish is being mellow or when I’m too curious not to. I have some physical challenges that make my left arm not work so well and I find that I tend to have walleyes flopping around “dancing” on the floor of my boat when I try to get an accurate measurement. Additionally, I’ve experienced so much variability in walleye sizes that I’ve chosen “weight” as my personal preference to define a trophy.
In 2022 I caught a walleye exceeding 34” but it was a fish in decline and looked deadly skinny. It only weighed 9.63 pounds. I don’t count it as a trophy and it’s not in my count of ten pluses…even though it may be my longest walleye ever. Nor do I count the 31 incher I caught last month as a trophy because it only weighed 9.14 pounds…again, apparently in decline and bad skinny. Further de-emphasizing measurements in my own mind is my biggest 16.22 pounder. That ridiculously thick, broad, round fish was only 30.5 inches long on a bump board (32 inches when held cradled in my arms to measure). A 30.5 incher should normally weigh between 10 and 11 pounds. This fish was special! My two biggest fish last year, a 13.24 and a 12.06 were both under 30 inches—the 13.24 was 29.9 inches and the 12+ was 28.9”. I count both as trophies because they eclipsed my 10 pound trophy defining line. In 2023 I caught 8 fish over 30” but of the 8 over 30” only 5 cracked 10 pounds on the scale.
I understand that the younger generation tends to focus more on length than weight…hey, to each his own. I’m just belaboring the point so you understand that I’m a scale guy. Also, I’m aware that hanging a fish from a lip-gripping scale isn’t kind to it. But flopping it around on the floor to get a length isn’t kind to it either. With my physical infirmities, I do less damage to the fish with the scale than with the bump board. Frankly, for consistency I’m continuing my 40 year history of using weight to tell if my fish are big or not. That’s just me.
How To
Netting more than one belly-dragging horse of a fish is no accident. And there’s more of us trophy junkies than you think. Most big fish specialists keep their knowledge a little closer to their chest than I do. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. You just don’t see them mixed in with all the other boats at the community hole very often.
And the more rabid we get the more we start traveling to trophy walleye destinations around the continent…a week at Tobin, Erie, Columbia, Missouri, Green Bay etc. etc. etc.
Target and Focus-- Fishing for oversized walleye is not necessarily the same as everyday walleye fishing. My game isn't to simply fish for walleyes a lot and hope for a trophy every now and then. That's a common misconception held by anglers not yet in the trophy zone on a regular basis. You won't consistently LUCK INTO multiple really large walleyes just by going fishing. That’s why the vast majority of anglers only rarely catch tremendous sized walleyes! That’s also why most guides—pressured to produce fish for their clients—don’t catch more trophies than the rest of us. Their livelihood points them toward more reliable size classes to keep clients happy. Us trophy guys are happy with one bite per day—as long as it’s seriously bigger than average!
Big fish require big commitment. Last fall I caught my biggest of the year--13.24 pounds--in late October. Then after 7 skunk trips…let me emphasize…after 7 skunk trips in November, I finally caught another walleye. It was my second largest of the year at 12.06 pounds and on a different reservoir than the previous big fish. One came on a trolled stickbait and one on a jig and plastic sniped on forward facing sonar. I could have gone to community holes and “nurseries” to catch a few fish on any of those skunk days, but I’ll gladly trade those 12 inch rats for skunk days if I can bookend my skunk trips with huge lugs like I did last year.
Last November After 7 Previous Skunk Trips, I Broke the Slump with this 12.06 Pounder. It Was Just Under 29 Inches But Obviously Still Counts as a Trophy. Cracked the Ten Pound Barrier Means Trophy to Me!
Typically, when we set a goal of bringing home a few fillets our focus is simply to find and catch fish. Most of us get pretty good at it too. But if you REALLY REALLY want to find scary-big walleyes with some regularity you’ll want to choose to target the big girls. That may seem obvious, but ask yourself what percentage of your days on the water were spent specifically hunting bigger fish? For most of us, the answer is a fairly low percentage. I’ll be blunt. When you catch a couple nice eater sized walleyes do you cuss under your breath, reel in and run somewhere else to find more size? When you catch a bunch of 5 pound schoolie males on a trophy water do you freak out, get pissed off and go hunting for adult female fish? When your Livescope is lit up with schooled and biting fish, does that frustrate you? I can assure you that trophy fanatics can answer, “Yes!” to all of these questions.
I’ll say it outright, most of the time catching great numbers of fish means you won’t be catching many trophies. I’ve told lots of fishing acquaintances that when I say I caught 40 fish yesterday, just tell me, “Sorry you had such a crappy day yesterday, Ron.” Certainly it does happen, but generally you won’t pull ten-pound-plus walleyes out of schools of smaller fish. You may find the pigs on the same side of the lake, but rarely mixed in with “smalls.” My world revolves around mature females—walleyes that is. All other categories of walleye are of less importance to me. Most trophy chasers do the same.
Here's a less known example of catch rate as it pertains to trophy catches. I’ve been known to sacrifice catch rate for size. Fall of 2018 on the Columbia my buddy Eric “Pa” Dirks was more than tripling my catch rate dragging a high-pitched, loud, rattling crankbait. This went on for a couple nights in a row. I stuck with a lower pitched thumping quiet rattler and my meager catch rate hoping for that big girl. Finally got an 11.5 pounder which was the big fish for that weekend for my boat. Sometimes, even in the same boat with a friend you’ll want to ignore tactics that are productive to find methods that are TROPHY productive.
Another example. Recently, VMC Bladed Hybrid Treble hooks have gotten good press on Target Walleye email blasts. Editor, Brett McComas, has repeatedly documented as much as 7 to 1 catch rate for the bladed flashy trebles over normal trebles. I started playing around with those trebles when they first came out about 3 years ago and I also have strong comparative numbers in favor of the bladed hooks. They flat work! However, in that 3 year time frame I caught more than a dozen 10-pound-plus walleyes and ZERO came on the bladed trebles. I’m talking about perhaps a hundred hours dragging cranks with both bladed and normal trebles and the normal trebles seriously defeated the bladed ones for monster fish. I now use the bladed trebles infrequently because I’m not interested in catching more fish. I only want size! Note also that I’m not exclusively a crankbait guy, far from it. But seasonally, cranks and sticks get plenty wet in my boat.
Traditional walleye regions of the country have more than one water body with walleyes swimming around. In almost all instances one lake or river system will be known for bigger fish than the other waters in the area—so fish there! Learn as much as you can about walleyes in that lake. Try to gain a feel for how walleyes move around that water body from season to season. I’ve experienced times when it took several years to get a handle on the big girls in one place or another. But simply going to the same old boat ramp and doing the same old thing isn’t likely to produce anything but the same old fish!
I can’t help but bring this up…the old saw that a 30” or 10-pound-plus walleye is “the fish of a lifetime” and that catching one in the teens is “a fish of a thousand lifetimes.” Let’s be clear, for anglers who casually fish walleyes a few times a year for table fare, a 30” or 10-pound-plus walleye is likely the fish of a lifetime for that angler. And in famed walleye states like Minnesota or even North Dakota, an 8 pound or 28” fish qualifies for a Master Angler award from the state. Hear this loud and clear, those 8 pound 28 inchers are only the fish of the weekend in many (most?) Western reservoirs. And that 8 pounder isn’t even the fish of the hour on a good day on the Great Lakes. My own personal catch stats prove that anglers who focus on tremendous trophies can legitimately EXPECT to crack a tenner every year…or maybe 5 per year like my past 5 years. But I’m not doing that by fishing 6 or 8 times a year in the “fillet hole.”
My Personal Best at 16.22 Pounds. It Was Weighed on 5 Different Scales and the Only Two that Matched Were the Lightest Ones, So that's the Weight. She Swam Away on Video
I’ve chosen to spend the past 40 years of my life near trophy waters while fishing specifically for trophy walleyes 75-95 times a year. I currently live where I have 3 Missouri River reservoirs out my door—27 boat ramps on 3 reservoirs all within one hour of my garage. And I’m not worried, you won’t come here. No sane Midwest walleye seeker would drive 7 hours past Fort Peck to come to my little reservoirs. Peck is 10 times better than my lakes. And nobody is coming here from the West since they have the Columbia River to the West of me. Previously, I grew up on the Columbia and even have a high school diploma from Columbia River High School—how cool is that? I got to be a part of the learning curve on that Western fishery and even wrote my first walleye book about the developing walleye fishery on the Columbia. That was in 1988! Most people choose where to live based on family or jobs or weather. I choose where to live based on trophy walleye opportunities, and that’s why my numbers are good enough that I can proudly say, I’m number 200!