Journal of a Minnesota Angler

Species: Walleye
Size: 24″
Lure used: white pearl super fluke

Date: 7/23/2008
Time: Evening
Body of water: Poplar Lake
Location: Gunflint Trail
Weather Conditions: [don’t remember]

How I caught my largest walleye to date is kind of a funny story that I thought you might enjoy.

Ken and I were fishing walleye alley trolling with Lazy Ikes. It was pretty quiet until Ken landed a 12″ walleye on his pole. The lure, because of its treble hooks, got all tangled up in the net.

While he worked on untangling his lure, I decided to do a few casts with the white pearl super fluke on my other rod (my trolling rod was pulled in because we stopped the boat to land Ken’s fish). On the first cast, I dropped the fluke about 6″ from shore in about 2 ft of water. I immediately felt a tick-tick and a grab. I waited to feel the fish and set the hook.

“Ken, I’ve got a fish!”

“Really? Play with it.”

“Play with it???”

Now you have to understand that I’ve lost my share of fish over the years so I like to net a fish as soon as I can. It made me nervous to “play” with a fish. But what made matters worse is that the fish was coming toward me. I was a struggling to keep the line taut.

“It’s coming toward the boat!”

“Hold on to it,” Ken replied.

At this point, I still didn’t know what kind or what size of fish I had on. If I had thought about it, I would have known the fish hit like a walleye, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. As soon as he got within a few feet of the boat, he took off. And he took off strong.

“Woah!”

With that run, I knew he was gonna be good size. There’s nothing like the sound of a screaming drag to get your adrenaline going.

Fortunately, Ken had gotten the net loose and by the time I was able to reel him in, Ken had the net ready. We netted it and were both amazed at the size of the catch. There were high fives all around.