06-27-2011, 08:45 PM
Catch a Cure for Cancer
Starvation Reservoir – June 25th
My partner Todd Hall and I fished the Catch a Cure tournament again this year on Starvation Reservoir over the weekend. Just wanted to give a quick update of our pre-fishing and tournament experience.
Friday, June 24th (Practice)
I arrived at Starvation Reservoir on Friday morning and Todd and I hit the water at 6:00 AM. Weather was good with a slight wind which turned into a gale at about 10:30 in the morning…water temp was 62 degrees in the morning warming to 66 by afternoon. We had a pretty good idea of what the pattern would be so we began the day eliminating presentations and patterns we thought might have a chance to work. Always better to have two or three tricks in the bag going into a tournament…right? We fished an area by the boat ramp with no luck and we weren’t seeing any fish on the graph. Shortly thereafter, we moved above the bridge with limited success. The water has cleared up some on the Strawberry end but is still very dirty where the channel runs through the reservoir. If you want to know where exactly the channel is, this is a good time to go and see it. We did manage a couple of small walleye and one 13” perch in that area….but we were still not marking the numbers of fish we expected on the graph so we again moved…this time into Rabbit. We hit a couple of areas back in that area and again were not marking the numbers we were looking for. By that time it was already 10:00…so we motored up into the Knights Hollow area and did manage to find some good fish. The weed growth in in this area is good…..we were finding weed beds down to 20 feet in some places. The fish we found were shallow…but we did manage to boat over 30 walleye in a short amount of time…..and our total weight for the day was 10.5 lbs. (5 fish) We felt good going into the tournament, and also felt that we had a pattern which would hold since the weather was stable…so we stopped fishing for the day at 1:00. Just a side note…..we are using the Rapala digital scale this year with the Ardent Culling System and it is really an asset for nailing down patterns and finding the right size of fish. Now we know our weights exactly….and going by length alone is not a good practice. Several of the fish we measured and weighed were very different. It is possible that a 15 inch fish will weigh more than a 16 inch fish….we proved it.
Saturday, June 25th (Tournament)
We launched for the tournament at 6:00 AM…sun was already up and we headed back up into Knights Hollow. We caught a limit of fish rather quickly and began to upgrade around 8:30 AM. It seemed that by 10:00, the bite had shut completely off…and the wind was nowhere to be found. We were hoping it would come up and turn the bite back on…but it never did. It turned out to be an early morning bite and we were lucky that we found the fish we did when we did. We weighed in with 8.5 lbs…..the largest fish coming in at 3.5 lbs. Todd was using a chartreuse Bleeder Chain and leech when he caught that fish in 22 feet of water. This walleye proved to be the biggest for the tournament allowing Todd to claim the award and custom rod for biggest walleye. For the tournament we finished third….about 1.5 lbs out of first place. We anticipated sorting through several dozen fish….but we only managed around 15 fish total on Saturday, all ranging between 15 and 24 inches. All in all it was a fun tournament and always a great time to fish with Todd. We also managed to catch up with FOD and his girlfriend for a choice beverage, a good cigar, and some great conversation on Friday evening. Jerry Shlief and his team put on a great tournament every year and it's nice to hear the stories about the good things they are doing for Camp Hobie. I would encourage everyone to find the time in 2012 to be a part of this event!
Chad Miller
Chadmillerfishing
[signature]
Starvation Reservoir – June 25th
My partner Todd Hall and I fished the Catch a Cure tournament again this year on Starvation Reservoir over the weekend. Just wanted to give a quick update of our pre-fishing and tournament experience.
Friday, June 24th (Practice)
I arrived at Starvation Reservoir on Friday morning and Todd and I hit the water at 6:00 AM. Weather was good with a slight wind which turned into a gale at about 10:30 in the morning…water temp was 62 degrees in the morning warming to 66 by afternoon. We had a pretty good idea of what the pattern would be so we began the day eliminating presentations and patterns we thought might have a chance to work. Always better to have two or three tricks in the bag going into a tournament…right? We fished an area by the boat ramp with no luck and we weren’t seeing any fish on the graph. Shortly thereafter, we moved above the bridge with limited success. The water has cleared up some on the Strawberry end but is still very dirty where the channel runs through the reservoir. If you want to know where exactly the channel is, this is a good time to go and see it. We did manage a couple of small walleye and one 13” perch in that area….but we were still not marking the numbers of fish we expected on the graph so we again moved…this time into Rabbit. We hit a couple of areas back in that area and again were not marking the numbers we were looking for. By that time it was already 10:00…so we motored up into the Knights Hollow area and did manage to find some good fish. The weed growth in in this area is good…..we were finding weed beds down to 20 feet in some places. The fish we found were shallow…but we did manage to boat over 30 walleye in a short amount of time…..and our total weight for the day was 10.5 lbs. (5 fish) We felt good going into the tournament, and also felt that we had a pattern which would hold since the weather was stable…so we stopped fishing for the day at 1:00. Just a side note…..we are using the Rapala digital scale this year with the Ardent Culling System and it is really an asset for nailing down patterns and finding the right size of fish. Now we know our weights exactly….and going by length alone is not a good practice. Several of the fish we measured and weighed were very different. It is possible that a 15 inch fish will weigh more than a 16 inch fish….we proved it.
Saturday, June 25th (Tournament)
We launched for the tournament at 6:00 AM…sun was already up and we headed back up into Knights Hollow. We caught a limit of fish rather quickly and began to upgrade around 8:30 AM. It seemed that by 10:00, the bite had shut completely off…and the wind was nowhere to be found. We were hoping it would come up and turn the bite back on…but it never did. It turned out to be an early morning bite and we were lucky that we found the fish we did when we did. We weighed in with 8.5 lbs…..the largest fish coming in at 3.5 lbs. Todd was using a chartreuse Bleeder Chain and leech when he caught that fish in 22 feet of water. This walleye proved to be the biggest for the tournament allowing Todd to claim the award and custom rod for biggest walleye. For the tournament we finished third….about 1.5 lbs out of first place. We anticipated sorting through several dozen fish….but we only managed around 15 fish total on Saturday, all ranging between 15 and 24 inches. All in all it was a fun tournament and always a great time to fish with Todd. We also managed to catch up with FOD and his girlfriend for a choice beverage, a good cigar, and some great conversation on Friday evening. Jerry Shlief and his team put on a great tournament every year and it's nice to hear the stories about the good things they are doing for Camp Hobie. I would encourage everyone to find the time in 2012 to be a part of this event!
Chad Miller
Chadmillerfishing
[signature]
