Forty-nine teams from South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa competed in this one-day event.

There would be a 90% payback on the tournament with cash & prizes going ton the top five teams as well as a big fish prize.

In the tournament, each team was allowed to weigh in five fish, with the heaviest weight deciding the winner.

As the boats sped out across the lake at 7:00 am, weather conditions were predicted to be partly sunny with the wind picking up throughout the day.

Teams were spread out across the lake from the dam up into the river, all hoping they’d be able to locate the big fish that would win the tournament for them.

Crankbaits seemed to be what most teams were using with some of the teams along the shorelines and breaks giving livebait a try.

Weather conditions changed throughout the day with a cloudbank and gusty winds moved in about half way through the tournament, forcing some of the anglers to change their tactics.

Final weigh in was scheduled for 3:00 pm and as the contents brought their bags to the scale, it appeared that an average weight of 3 pounds per fish would be needed to win this tournament.

The Gause team from Tabor, SD took top honors with five fish weighing 11.55 pounds.

In second place was the team of Chris Happe, Yankton, S.D. and Brent Barta, Volin, S.D. with 10.8 pounds.

The third place team of Nathan and Haylie Braaten, Yankton, S.D. came to the scales with 10.55 pounds.

Curt and Ashley Oliver, Yankton, S.D. had 10.30 pounds putting them in 4th Place.

Rounding out the winners was the fifth place team of James Wiener and Taylor Portilli, Yankton, SD with 9.7 pounds.

The big fish of the tournament was 5.5-pound fish caught by the Korleski team from Tea, S.D. and Ireton, IA.

Over 100 fish were weighed in during the tournament with eleven of the forty-nine teams having their five fish limit at weigh in.

Plans are to make this an annual event with information on next year’s classic to be announced later this year.

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.

Established in 1992 as a leading edge Geographical Information Systems software company they focused primarily on real estate mapping. In 1999 the company turned to inland lake mapping throughout the United States.

Since then, the company has been sending out crews to map our most popular fishing lakes.

They now have digital map cards available for the Dakotas, Minnesota and several other upper Midwestern states.

For instance, their Dakota’s chip features 247 lakes with contours and 15 more lakes mapped with their 1-foot, high definition contours.

Pro anglers have been quick to pick up on the advantage these new chips give them.

Pro walleye angler Doc Samson rates lake maps as a tool almost as important as your sonar.

“When I go to a lake, I study its bottom,” he says. “Now you have people who do it for you. It’s just a huge advance.”

Another walleye pro, Jon Thelen, of Professional Angling Promotions, has moved his GPS antenna to the stern of his boat, right above his transducer.

“I want my GPS antenna directly over my transducer so my screen will be 100 percent accurate,” he says. “If the antenna were alongside my sonar, as most are installed, I would have about 12 feet separating the antenna and the transducer.”

Anyone who has fished for very long understands the importance of having a good contour map of the lake you are fishing.

It’s a tremendous time saver and just studying it before you go fishing will enable you to come up with a game plan given the season, species of fish and the particular weather pattern you expect to encounter.

Yet, accuracy of these maps have left a lot to be desired and most lakes were mapped years ago by the old, ‘drop a sinker and measure the line’ method.

That, thanks to LakeMaster is changing rapidly.

To learn the full story about their company, check out their web site: www.lakemap.com

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.

Fish are able to detect a change of weather well before it happens using their lateral line, which is a series of sensitive nerve endings extending from behind the gills to their tail.

Since they know that a sever weather change is about to occur, walleyes and other species of fish will go on a feeding binge prior to the arrival of the storm, then move deep, lying dormant on the bottom until weather conditions stabilize.

If you are unfortunate to have to fish these dormant fish after a storm has passed through, you’ll need a lot of patience and a precise bait presentation, such as a Lindy Rig.

I’ve had my best luck on these inactive fish by presenting my bait right in front of the walleyes nose and staying there until I make them mad enough to bite.

Since the sun is at its highest point this time of the year and walleyes are very light sensitive, they’re going to be more active in periods where sunlight penetration is minimal.

These periods include: early morning and late evening, as the sun is at it’s lowest point and sunlight penetration is the least during this time of the day.

Not all walleyes will stay deep throughout the day, as there are times when the conditions are right, walleyes can be caught shallow.

One of these is on those very windy days as there’s a good chance that walleyes will move up shallow to feed in the on top of humps rock piles and sandbars.

Because the surface of the water is being rippled by the wind, reducing the sunlight’s penetration, it makes the shallow water areas more comfortable and walleyes will move up from the deep water to feed.

Another time that you’ll find walleyes shallow during the day would be when heavy winds are pounding into a point or shoreline.

With the wind hammering against a shoreline, a mud line is created, dramatically cutting light penetration along the shoreline.

It may seem hard to believe that even walleyes would be able to find bait in the muddy coming back off a shoreline.

Just because it’s muddy on the first couple of inches doesn’t mean that it’s that way the way to the bottom.

In many cases the water a foot or so below this mud line is cloudy or even clear allowing walleyes the opportunity to move up during the day and feed.

In a river, fish will also be in the deepest holes or in shallower areas where there’s heavier current as this cools and oxygenates the water making it a more hospitable environment for walleyes.

During the heat of the summer in a river, an increase or decrease in water, will cause fish to make sudden location changes that anglers can take advantage of.

With a drop in water levels, fish will be forced into the remaining deep holes, concentrating them in smaller areas.

If there’s an increase in water flow, fish will move up stream, up against the sandbars and shallower to feed, taking advantage of the new influx of baitfish and other aquatic creatures that are being flushed into the system.

The Dog Days of summer usually mean deep-water presentations, but under the right conditions, walleyes can be shallow giving anglers the opportunity to fish them with bottom bouncers and spinners, Lindy Rigs or by pitching jigs and crankbaits.

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.

It won’t work, the informed worried.

The sinker had been invented to fish the Missouri River reservoirs. Here, you needed to cover a lot of water fast to find fish.

Depth finders were not the precision instruments they are today. You fished by pulling spinners on points until you found walleyes. The 2-ounce bottom bouncer allowed you to fish fast, maybe three miles an hour or more and cover a variety of depths at the same time.

It wasn’t until South and North Dakota walleye professionals began winning tournaments that the bottom bouncer got serious attention.

Today, it is a staple of walleye fishing.

If you only have one size, choose the 2-ounce. It can fish water from 12 feet to 20 feet effectively and that is where the walleyes will be most of the time. Tie on a spinner, two hooks for a nightcrawler rig, one hook for a leech or minnow. Length of snell should be about three feet. And begin trolling.

Don’t let out too much line. At your trolling speed, the line should enter the water at a 45-degree angle. The wire should just “tick” the bottom. The only way to fish this rig wrong is to let out too much line and cause it to drag.

The latest refinement is to place a small colored bead above a hook and fish a half of night crawler. It’s deadly.

Bottom bouncers come in a number of weights, but you can’t go wrong with an assortment of one ounce, two ounce and three ounce sizes. You can fish all depths with these.

One of the big advantages of the bottom bouncer is that it is relatively snag free. Keep your snells relatively short to keep the hook from dragging and snagging up. If snags aren’t a problem experiment with snell length.

On Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake, for instance, 6-foot snells and a single hook are the rule.

So, experiment. But right now, on Francis Case, a spinner on a three-foot snell and bottom bouncer will catch your limit of walleyes in no time.