29-30 August 2014
This post is for Mike and the nice people at NWT.
We are at the Escanaba, MI marina, one of this years host for the Cabela’s National Walleye Tour. It’s three 2 day tournaments that end up with a Championship. This year the third event is Escanaba.
I got up at 6AM to start watching the activities. The marina basin slowly filled with 100 boats ranging from 17′ to 25′. All with large (200-250) hp motors. Most would be what you would call a classic fishing boat. No cabin, just two seats and mostly flat open areas to walk around in.
At 6:45 they announced that boats should start lining up for the start. Each boat has a boat number, so today boat #1 goes first, #100 will go first on Saturday. They have everyone start their boat and test out their safety switches. If the driver goes over the side there is a lanyard that pulls the motor stop switch. Which was important today since the forecast was for rain, 15kt winds and 4 foot waves. We were in the harbor today since it was too rough out.
But the driver and co-angler were competing for $300,000 in prizes / money. Top boat takes $61,000, ( a $46,000 boat and $15,00 cash) and the top co-angler gets $7,000. Not bad for two days of fishing. Except for the rain. Except for the waves. But at 7AM as a gray dawn was breaking they called boat #1 and he and his buddy headed down the long channel to a very ugly Lake Michigan. By 7:30 number 100 had motored by and they were all out fishing.
Rules are pretty basic, Walleye only, two lures (either two rods or a rod with 2 lures per angler), no more than 2 fish over 23” max 5 fish per boat. All fish have to be over 15”. (Michigan DNR rules)
The co-anglers are assigned a boat on the first day and a different boat on the second day. The boats keep their first day total into the second day, as does the co-angler. Mike, maybe you can get signed up as a co-angler!
I walked back down to the tournament site around 3 PM when the first boats were due back. They have a pretty cool system for handling the fish. When boats get back to the dock they are given a heavy duty bag about 3′ square that has reinforced sides and handles. Anglers put their fish and some water in the bag and lug it (21-30 pounds of fish plus water) to the weigh in area.
They put the bags into 6′ x 3′ tubs of water that have bubbler hoses. They put a bubbler hose into the bag to help the fish stay alive. When they are called they go to a measure station where the fish are measured to make sure they are over 15” and to record the count and the max weight. Fish are put back into an empty bag.
Fish and the bag (no water) are off to the main stage to be weighed in and let the anglers give comments on the day. “It was like a walk in the park, I was good with the 6 foot waves, but I lost my hat, I’d like to thank Cabela’s, Trophy, Mike’s lures and Mom for a great day”.
Fish then go around the corner where there is a sponsor logo wall. They pull two fish out and hold them up for official pictures for their scrapbooks.
Bags then go to another tank where they are partially filled with water, keeping the fish alive. Then a dock hand carries the bags of fish, two at a time to the waiting recovery boat that has a giant tank in the center. The water is recirculated with fresh water, and there is an oxygen tank that bubbles into the water. About 65-70% of the fish live (today there were about 400 fish caught). The dying fish are pulled out and given to a charity. Based on the three guys that were picking coolers of fish, I’m going to say the local Legion, VFW, Elks or Eagles are having a walleye fish fry tonight. Note, based on the fish weight and the water weight, the dock hand carried just over 5,000 lbs of fish and water, 100 feet to the boat. When I talked to the guy later he said he was beat.
The recovery boat will go out into the Little Bay de Noc and dump the fish out. According to the tournament guy I talked to, the fish are pretty stressed out. They will go find water about 15′-20′ deep (they try to find a spot about that deep to dump them). They hang out for 24-48 hours, but they won’t bite a lure. Within 72-96 hours they are back where they were caught. I asked about DNR being here to tag fish (hey 400 fish is a good sample size) but was told that they don’t have budgets to do that. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t.
Today’s results were pretty amazing for me, since I’m a non fish guy. Top 2 places all had 27 lbs of fish, the longest fish of the day was 35”, weight wise a 7.6 lb fish was the winner (and oddly, they only caught one fish for the day) Four boats had zero fish, another 5 had only one. Go out in small craft warning weather, fish for 8 hours and come home with nothing. Not my idea of fun.
Cabela’s gave a ton of rods and lures to kids that were there at 4 PM. Nice!
Live stream of the weigh in and stats. Look for the event on NBC in December. Don’t look for me, I tried to stay away from the camera people.
Side note for me: The camera guy had a 4 rotor helicopter that he was flying, sponsored by Ion.
Nice pictures of the departure, some boats coming back in and crowd shots. I really want one of these, it can carry our Go-Pro.
I might do the loop again to get an aerial view of the Quo Vadimus traversing a lock or over our anchorage in Baie Fine. I just need to convince Susan that the $2000 is worth it vs the $800 in fuel that would take us to Baie Fine and back. (Or with the kids, maybe the [Phantom 2 with GoPro gimbals], will make our combined Christmas lists. Maybe a Kickstarter!)
Anyway it was a bonus day for me, I’ve never seen a fishing tournament. The people running the tournament were super nice and spent time with me talking about what they were doing. I thought robot people were passionate about what they do, the people from the NWT were equally great. Thanks!
Pictures from the rainy, foggy, Saturday launch
