Trophy Walleye fishing at Kiwanis Club of Lakeshore, 1st Annual Walleye Tournament, St. Mary’s River, ON.
Posted on July 11th, 2011We just finished a wonderful trip to beautiful Sault Ste. Marie, ON where we spent the last 3-days fishing for walleye and covering the Kiwanis Club of Lakeshore, 1st Annual Walleye Tournament held in downtown Sault Ste. Marie. For those of you that may not be familiar with Sault Ste. Marie, ON, it is located right on the St. Mary’s River which flows from Lake Superior to Lake Huron. The river flows about 15 miles before it reaches some of the bays in Lake Huron. This river get’s healthy runs of Chinook and Pink Salmon, as well as Steelhead and Atlantic Salmon during the cold-water months. In the summer time it also produces world-class walleye fishing both in the river and also in the many bays and lakes connected to this system.
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We started off on Fri., by fishing the main St. Mary’s River. Our guides and camera boat operators for the weekend were Matt & Aaron Yukich who operate Ontario North Fishing Adventures. We decided to run to the lower section of the St. Mary’s and to bottom-bounce worm harnesses using 3-ounce bottom-walking weights and #3 blades. We fished two reef-edges and one point that was surrounded by almost 70’ of water and all three locations produced nice walleye. There is quite a current on the St. Mary’s (anywhere from 4-7mph), and the current can fluctuate every day as water is drawn & released by the hydro generating stations, which makes fishing harnesses near the bottom very challenging.
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On Saturday we shot the event, did interviews and covered the weigh-in.
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On Sunday we focused on Lake George, a 9-mile run from Sault Ste. Marie, ON, and fished with Colton, Dion, & Dennis Smith. Colton is 5-yrs. old and had won a coloring contest to win a ½ day fishing outing with my wife Barbara & I. We ended up hooking 5-walleye, filmed our outing and Colton landed two nice walleye weighing between 2-4 lb. We shot many segments for one of the TV shows trolling in-line planer board with “tattle-flags”, and small worm-harnesses in 6-14’ of water. Besides catching plenty of walleye I tried casting a Rapala Tail Dancer #9 and tied into a nice Smallmouth Bass.
Our gear of choice for this outing included the new Rapala Tournament Walleye Rods matched with R-Type and Shift baitcasting & spinning reels. We filled our reels with
Sufix 832 10 & 20 lb. test braided line, we also used 20 lb. test Sufix Fluorocarbon leaders to prevent line abrasion and also because it is literally invisible underwater. We also used the Lucky Strike Live Release Basket Net to land and release all our fish. The top producing worm harnesses were the Luhr Jensen Jewel and the Lucky Strike Fluorocarbon worm harnesses.
The event was a great success and we hope to cover it again next year. If you would like to fish in the Kiwanis Club of Lakeshore, Sault Ste. Marie 2nd Walleye Tournament next year you can get more info. by going to, Kiwanis Invitational Walleye Tournament.
