by John Stevens

I recently competed in the Colorado Walleye Association's Fall Classic tournament at Horsetooth Reservoir. It was a very exciting event, with many really good teams entered. Horsetooth would present a challenge to me in that I don't fish it often and therefore don't know it well at all. But... walleye are walleye, and I figured I could break down the lake, find fish, and have a good chance at doing well in the tournament. It is that breakdown of the lake, weather conditions, strategy, and results that I want to share with you here. Hopefully, there may be things that will trigger a memory or help you to find fish when in unfamiliar waters.

My partner and I were unable to pre-fish the lake any day except the Friday before the tournament. The weather was bad, fast moving cold front had moved in, rain, and cold. Water temps were around 60 degrees. We first headed out to hit the main lake points, and the edges of some gravel humps that I was aware of. The fish were not found in great numbers there. We tried the coves, the islands, and the sharp drop offs near the west side to no avail. Still only saw scattered fish. Our thought process here was that if this continued, we would be fishing for individual fish the whole tournament.

However, when traveling from spot to spot, point to point, we did find walleyes schooled up along with the bait fish over the open water. Clearly, it was a trolling bite! Awesome, trolling is a technique which we both excel at! We trolled several passes in multiple directions and caught fish. Excellent!

But.. I had a nagging feeling inside that all was not right. I had been listening to the weather forecasts, and Saturday, tournament day called for bright sunny skies, post front. Inside.. I knew the bite wouldn't be the same, nor would the lake fish the same.

Saturday morning came, and sure enough the cold front had passed through leaving in its wake a cold night, but clear, bright , sunny skies the next day.

We hit the water about 6:15, waited by the ramp to go a little before seven. We had to make a quick decision and a change to the game plan. As the start went off, the majority of the boats roared to the north end of the lake, while we motored our way over to a nearby main lake point. I had a hunch, that with the bright sunny skies, that the walleyes would be relating to structure, ambushing the smelt, and the bite would clearly be a crank and jigging spoon bite. We located a "cut" in the bottom just off the point, on the lee side of the wind. I saw the walleyes hanging on the uppermost sidewall of the cut, and a huge school of smelt at a higher level.

Dropped a jigging spoon down, jigged it.. fish on! We caught our first 3 fish within 20 minutes, and another within 40 minutes. Just as suddenly, the bite turned off around 8:30. We moved around, trying to find the walleyes and smelt. We found the smelt, but the walleyes were lying dormant beneath them. Resting would be my guess. I knew we couldn't possibly fish the entire lake, as it's too large, so we broke it down and fished the points, humps, cuts, and transition points. Every point, specifically on the lee side , held fish. Sometimes they were walleyes, oftentimes they were smallmouth bass, once they were perch. Not little perch, monster 13" perch. Another interesting note was that more fish were found on the shaded side of structure rather than the sunny side. Made sense, bright sunny sky, more light penetration. Walleye by nature have an advantage over prey with their eyesight, therefore they prefer lower light penetration for better ambush of the prey. Hence the "walleye chop". When the water is choppy, light is diffused and penetrates less, turning on the walleye to move up in the water column and feed. Bright skies, did the opposite causing the fish to seek shadier, lower light penetrating areas.

Even though we saw walleyes, and dropped on them, we were unable to catch any more later on. We caught plenty of other fish, but our bite was over.

The result of the tournament was that we finished in 6th place. I was very pleased with our finish given the challenges and conditions we faced. Plenty of other teams blanked, and didn't catch a fish. Those that depended upon a trolling bite, did not fare well at all, because the trolling bite from Friday was gone. Lessons learned? Be flexible, remember the habits and preferences of the fish you are trying to get, learn the prey, what their movements and habits are. And... when in unfamiliar waters, revert back to the basis of breaking it down. Fish main lake points, submerged humps, transitions in bottom content, and pay attention to winds and wind direction. I am excited about fishing tournaments, and I look forward to next years CWA tournament season!

Good fishing,

Tiny