Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Reprinted from South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited January 2010 Newsletter.

South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited have their 13th Annual Lake Francis Case Walleye Tournament planned for Saturday April 17th.

The rules’ meeting is scheduled for the evening before April 16th at 7:00 pm at the Americinn in Chamberlain.

Prizes will be awarded for 1st through 20th place with 1st place paying (based on 100 teams) paying $3,000.00.

There will be will be $17,700 in prizes awarded during the tournament (based on 100 teams).Entry fee is $225.00 per two-man team.

For more information on South Dakota Walleyes Unlimited, tournament entry forms and rules go to www.sdwalleyesunlimited.org… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

Picture a lake map GPS chip that you could slip into your depth finder that is so accurate it shows contour lines in increments of one foot.

It is so precise that it literally draws a picture of the lake’s bottom.

Coupled with your GPS/sonar you can now place your boat on the exact spot on the map.

Star Wars technology?

Not any more.

Enter LakeMaster, a new company dedicated to bringing the angler accurate fishing maps.

It is a division of Waypoint Technologies, Inc., a privately-owned company located in Little Falls, Minn.

Their goal is to produce the most accurate lake maps available. Their products include high quality paper maps, PC computer software packages and digital GPS lake map cards.… Continue reading

Those of us, who have been patiently waiting for the warmer weather to get here, have gotten our wish.

This is the time of the year when the temperatures will start to rise, as will the humidity, making for perfect conditions for nasty weather and tougher walleye fishing conditions.

This time of the year, fish have a lot of different conditions they have to adjust or relate to including: rising water temperatures, rising/falling barometric pressure, high water, low water and the summers bright sunlight all making walleye fishing during the Dog Days of summer tough.

There are a few keys to locating and catching fish this time of the year.  Deeper water and areas with less sunlight penetration are where the fish will be located this time of the year.

With the rise in water temperatures, walleyes and other species of fish will head into deeper water searching out comfortable water temperatures.

These deep-water haunts provide the cooler water temperatures that the fish need to survive when things heat up.

There are several reasons that the fish will relocate into the depths. Another of these is that their food source, baitfish has moved down bringing the predator fish with them.

There are several methods that will allow you to take these Deep-water fish, those that have worked well for me are: leadcore line, snap weights or downriggers dragging crankbaits.

During this time of the year, the movement of the fish can vary drastically, especially just prior to a sever weather change.… Continue reading

The ripples from my tube jig entering the water hadn’t subsided when my line made an erratic turn to the right, indicating a strike. Rearing back hard on the rod, I hoped to force what ever had inhaled my bait in the direction of the boat.

Just about the time I thought I had it under control, a pound and a half smallmouth broke the surface of the water trying desperately to shake the hook embedding in it’s jaw.

We’d heard that the Smallmouth bite was on and had been invited up to fish Lake Francis Case by Team Outdoorsmen Adventures member Joel Vasek, Missouri Valley Guide Service.

Larry Myhre, Sioux City, IA. and I had made a quick trip hoping to get into some of the early season smallmouth fishing that we’d enjoyed the previous year.

As I landed the scrappy smallmouth, it looked as if 2009 would be another banner year for smallmouth on the lake.

We were casing into the rocks along the shoreline in one of the many creeks/bays that come off of the big lake. The shallow water in these areas warms more quickly than that in the main lake, attracting all species of fish early in the season.… Continue reading

Here’s the best walleye fishing tip you will get all week.

Grab a handful of 2-ounce bottom bouncers and some spinners, a couple dozen crawlers and head for Lake Francis Case.

Troll the mud flats at 1 1/2 to 2 miles an hour and you will catch more walleyes than you ever thought possible.

The mud flats won’t be hard to find. Just look for the concentration of boats.

Memorial Day weekend signals the beginning of some fantastic walleye fishing on this big reservoir. But, it could be Big Spirit Lake, East Okoboji Lake, Storm Lake or any number of other walleye waters within driving range.

The bottom bouncer and live bait rig will be the way to go all summer long.

When word of this unique fishing sinker first came out in the late 1970s, a lot of old walleye hands sneered at this awkward- looking wire with a big hunk of lead on it.

The Lindy Rig was king at the time. That meant a small, maybe 3/8-ounce, sinker which slid along the line so you could feed line to wary walleyes. Fish something like this on those windswept Minnesota walleye lakes? No way.… Continue reading

Summertime walleye fishing throughout the area is really pretty simple.

Just fish them in shallow water. Or fish them in deep water.

Well, that’s not really the case but I did want to get your attention.

In lakes such as Spirit Lake in northwest Iowa, you’ll find a lot of walleyes in the weedbeds this time of year. Look for cabbage beds or mats of coontail on the flats and you can rest assured that walleyes will be taking advantage of this shade and cover and can be caught.

On the other hand, rest assured there will be plenty of walleyes cruising the main lake basin which in this lake bottoms out at about 22 feet or so. There will be no structure, just a flat, dishpan shaped muddy bottom for the most part.

In reservoirs such as Lake Francis Case, Lake Sharpe or Lewis and Clark Lake on the Missouri River system, walleyes will be scattered throughout flooded trees in the deeper Francis Case or cruising the old river channel in the shallower Sharpe and Lewis and Clark lakes. In these lakes you will need to get down to 30 feet or so to reach the fish.

There’s a method of fishing deep walleyes which has been growing in popularity the past few years. There are few walleye crankbaits that will dive to these depths, most bottom out at somewhere from 12 to 18 feet. There is, however, an easy method to take these crankbaits to the deeper walleyes where walleyes are cruising in July and August.

It’s called snap weight fishing. It involves attaching a heavy sinker in front of your crankbait by means of a line release similar to those used in deep water salmon fishing.

In a nutshell, here’s how it works.… Continue reading

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal

BIG BEND DAM — Remnants of winter’s ice pack were still drifting downstream as Joel Vasek, Gary Howey and I jig fished the cold waters below the dam last week.

It didn’t take Gary long to find the fist walleye. It bit the three-way rig he was drifting as a dead rod while jigging with another.

The 16-inch fish was fat and sassy and we placed it in the livewell.

That was the beginning of a day of almost non-stop walleye action.

Sure, there were some down periods while we looked for fish hanging, usually, on outside bends of the old river channel in about 25 feet of water.

But once concentrations of walleyes were found, we control-drifted through them with 1/8 and 1/4-ounce jig heads tipped with minnows.

This is the time of year when walleyes by the tens of thousands accumulate below the Big Bend Dam all the way down to the town of Chamberlain and beyond.

During February and most of March, this is the only place to fish walleyes in Lake Francis Case. There is usually open water below the dam and anglers from all over come to join in the action.

This year there are lots of small fish and a lot of sorting has to be done to put together limits of 15-inch or larger fish.

It was an unusually warm day for early March and pleasant on the water. Flocks of geese, both Canadas and snows, constantly flew overhead throughout the day and a bunch of coyotes had serenaded us from the bank right at sunrise.

Vasek operates Missouri Valley Guide Service headquartered in Geddes, S.D.

We had stayed the night in his new lodge, a fancy retreat priced right for fishermen. In fact, we were his first guests.

We’ve fished with Joel at least a couple times a year the past few years and nobody knows Francis Case as well as he does.

He fishes here over 200 days most years.

For more information on guided trips or his new lodge, call (605) 337-3295 or Cell (605) 680-3877 or visit his website at www.walleyetamer.com.… Continue reading

The fishing has been great on Lake Francis Case since the ice has started to go out.

Jigs and minnows are the preferred bait and Team Outdoorsmen Adventures member Joel Vasek, Missouri Valley Guide Service, Geddes, SD has been doing very well.

Larry Myhre and I filmed with Joel last week and had a great time!

It didn’t take us long for  to catch our fish when we were with him last week.

If you’ve ever had the pleaseure to fish with Joel, you know he doesn’t do anything half way.  Those that have been guided by him while fishing and hunting trips are not only very successful, they come away with a ton of knoiwledge on how to be more successful in  the outdoors… Continue reading