ALMOST GUNLAKERS: TEAM T- TRAVELS TO THE WALLEYE CAPITOL OF THE WORLD!

What an adventure! This weekend I made the trip to the WALLEYE CAPITOL OF THE WORLD! LAKE ERIE!

We are talking hard core adventure here folks. My brother, a buddy of his, and me were in a fishing tournament on Friday and Saturday. The tournament was sponsored by the West Michigan Walleye Club. You must believe me that the rush of adrenaline when they launched the pack of 50 boats at 0630 am was intense!

Here we are leading the pack at kickoff!

The trip began at 0430 hours on Friday. I hopped into the truck with my brother and his buddy and began the drive over to Erie. We launched out of Monroe,MI. I have never seen a launch this big! It has 12 launching slips! I was a little groggy as I made the entire first day a 27 hour run without sleep....This old man still has it in him as I hung with the boys without fallin' over and did it all on no sleep!

I gotta tell ya, Joel's hot new deep Walleye boat really rocked! Made my motor look like a kids toy! As I hung on with both hands slammin' through the waves of Lake Erie at 45 mph I couldn't help but make a Tim the Toolman primate grunt! What a rush! Dual live wells, a big crankin' motor, a kicker motor that cost more than my Jeep, Dual fishfinders and a chart plotting GPS........MAN!

What a rush feeling these Walleye's consistently hammer our bait all day long! I have never fished Lake Erie and have only one comparable Walleye trip which was to Canada. This trip to Erie was undoubtedly the best Walleye fishing I have ever partaken in. What a blast! I would say the average of these EYES was about 16-19 inches. We caught about 26 fish on the first day and NEARLY 40 WALLEYE on day two.....WOW.....

WALLEYE FISHING TRAINING SECTION:
Here are some of the crucial integrated techniques to successful Walleye Fishing. This section is a bonus provided by Team T Outdoors.

CRUCIAL TROLLING TECHNIQUES
Now, without giving away our rigging secrets, we ran 6 poles and trolled......6 poles keeps ya busy and we were busy most of the entire time. We used nightcrawlers and made long 1 mile trolling sweeps.

These long trolling runs looking for pods of fish left some time for soaking up the sun. I was so relaxed and was able to do some serious stepping away from life.

THE B.W.S.S. TECHNIQUE
The only bad thing about this fishing was the fact that the nearest bathroom was 7-8 miles away. We were that far from shore out in Lake Erie. So................

When it's time to re-pollute ol' Lake Erie, a method passed down through generations of Walleye fisherman got put to use! Better known as the B.W.S.S (BIG WATER SAFETY SHIT) The ol' ass over the side of the boat schatt ass chummer routine! This time honored technique of shitting over the side of the boat involves the following:

And here is some time perfected form being demonstrated by my brother in this technique.....

Some may shake their head in disgust but let me tell you that there is no other choice when a DIE HARD WALLEYE fisherman has to leave a shit.....No sense inconveniencing your buddies by making a 7 mile run to poop. This method is very safe even on big choppy water as the rope supports and provides leverage to git er done promptly and safely!

TROLL, SET, PREPARE AND NET!

Almost as crucial a technique as BWSS is the -troll-set-prepare and net- technique.

As we would troll and watch the pole start to bounce, we allowed the fish to bite the bait. We would then pick up the pole out of the holder, and set the hoook!!!! Here's my brother at the end of the hook snap set--->

Now he is tied up and committed to bringing the fish in....."DON'T HORSE EM!" was the usual saying quipped out at the hook setter. You could sense the excitement in both the hook setter and other members of the boat knowing that we had a "FISH ON!" This leaves one of the two remaining members to hustle and grab the large landing net. Their job was to move to the location of the angler fighting the fish and prepare to net.

A very crucial concept in this technique is getting the net ready to go but not looking over eager to net the fish. This made the other members of the boat ornery. Just get the damn net and stand near the fighter. Don't start asking questions like, "is it a good one? Is he on there good? That looks like a good fish!" All of these sayings make the other boat members ornery and curse the fact it may be a lunker.

Here I have taken a vigilant post of netter.

Now folks, the real fight starting anxiety starts to build. You see, we're in this to win. Besides the fish not biting, the other way to not win in a tournament is to get fish on and lose them during the netting at the boat. We even had a dandy hog get off just prior to netting. So, a successful, quick, precision netting is crucial. Once the fish gets near the surface, you have one swipe to make with the net to grab em. With the large rolling choppy waves it is very easy for the fish to be 4' deep and suddenly pop to the surface. Once the slack hits, GOODBYE WALLEYE....

Here's a successful hot netting in progress.

FISH CLEANING-THE NEXT GENERATION

The final crucial technique is locating a Hotel that has a good fish cleaning station. I learned this weekend that its a little known fact that each and every hotel offers several rooms with a built in fish cleaning station. HUH? YOU DON'T BELIEVE ME?

Locating these rooms in the hotel is as easy as this: "hello, I would like to make a reservation. I would request a room with handicapped access please."

Make sure you bring a piece of cardboard along so you can lay it on the floor. As you can see in the above shown photo, handicapped bathrooms have a shower without barriers. This way you can cut up the fish on the cardboard and rinse any blood/fluids down the drain. Make sure you bring a couple of large garbage bags to put the fish remnants in.

The end of the tournament meant weigh in time. We sorted through our 15 fish (the limit for 3 anglers in Michigan-5 per piece) and picked our best five. Then we went full throttle to make it to the weigh-in.