Cabela’s Master Walleye Circuit (MWC)

MWC Detroit and Lake Erie
April 21 and 22 2007

By Sheldon Hatch

The first tourney of the year is always a challenge because you have to get all the bugs out of the boat and make sure all the electronics are working. My trip to the Detroit rivier with partner John Scalaro was no exception.

This was our first year fishing together as a team and our experience as fishing guides really helped on the water. We quickly gelled as a great fishing unit and fortunatly, because we had some interesting challenges to overcome.

All reports in the Windsor and Detroit area indicated that the tournament would be won on the river, so John and I headed out to the local spots on the Detroit river to find the walleye. The temperature on Wednesday, April 18th was only 7 degrees Celsius with a bitter wind chill.The river was very muddy with only a few inches of clarity, so we knew it was going to be a tough bite. After running 84 miles each day to cover most of the river we had found four good spots. During the practice time we had available on Wednesday and Thursday we were able to produced 18 to 20 inch male walleyes on Fin-tech Zone-R jigs tipped with plastics.

But, John and I decided the tournament could not be won in the river with the mud conditions as they were so on Friday, our final day of

practice, we decided we would make the run out into Lake Erie.

Friday morning we crossed over into Michigan to launch from Elizabeth Park in Trenton. What a difference a few days can make. The weather had made a big transformation from what was forcasted by weather services; light winds with 20 degree Celsius temperatures for both tournament days. We had a few bays picked from studying the maps and decided the big post spawn walleye would be in shallow warm bays. With this in mind we made a run out into the lake but unfortunately, during the 26 mile run out into open water, we managed to hit some floating debris and break the transducer on the transom. We quickly got the boat into trolling position but could not get the kicker to start. After 15 minutes of playing with the throttle it finally started. Then we had to figure out a way to fix the transducer. I reach down the back of the transom and noticed it had kicked up. So, with a quick adjustment, we where back in business. Page 2 >