RCL..Port Clinton April 28 - May 1

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April 28 May-1
Lake Erie
Port Clinton OH

Marina:
Catawba Island State Park
4049 E. Moore's Dock Road
Port Clinton OH 43452
(419) 797-4530

Registration:
Performing Arts Center
821 Jefferson Street
Port Clinton OH 43452
(419) 734-2147

Housing:
Ourguest Inn & Suites
220 E. Perry St.
Port Clinton OH 43452


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$3.19 million Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour headed to Lake Erie

All Michigan and Canadian waters are off limits


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Hope floats High winds could slow bite – and boats – for start of RCL Tour event on Erie



Nice now, nasty later? Morning sun and manageable winds might yield to high waves by afternoon for the RCL Tour event on Erie. (Photo by Dave Scroppo)

By Dave Scroppo - 28.Apr.2004


PORT CLINTON, Ohio — It’s nice now, but will it be nasty later? So goes the vexing question facing the competitors headed into Wednesday’s opening round of competition for the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Erie, where a revised forecast calls for morning zephyrs giving way to afternoon gusts of 25 mph.

And it’s just the sort of question that will influence not only how and where the pros fish but if they’ll catch Erie’s open-water walleyes and make it back in time.

“If they’re 5- or 6-footers, the guys will do OK,” says Ranger pro John Campbell of Marco Island, Fla. “If they’re 8s or 9s, it’ll slow everyone down and keep them from running to secondary spots.”

Another possible slowdown could come in the willingness of the walleyes to open sesame following a cold front that brought snow and sleet on Tuesday, the last day of pre-tournament practice, and greeted the field with another morning with air temperatures in the 30s.

“The fish were biting just as well yesterday, but sometimes the second day after a front they get more lethargic,” Campbell says.

A good bet for such conditions is the time-honored spinner rig, a combination of artificial offering with a rotating blade for flash and vibration paired with the scent and subtle action of a night crawler. The rig, too, has been somewhat outpacing the productivity of crankbaits, including Reef Runners and Smithwick Rogues, for numbers of fish in practice, a pattern that typically emerges when water temperatures enter the 50s.

But how the spinners are deployed might have to change with weather that normally sinks fish out of suspended mode and radically alters the way the rigs must be run when big waves would otherwise give them an undesired erratic action.

“I’ll be digging bottom,” says pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., a proficient and talented Great Lakes troller. “I might get out leadcore to minimize the surge in high waves.”

The final question mark is the anglers’ mobility. When big waves hit, it’s virtually impossible to move around and fish secondary spots.

Take, for instance, the thinking behind the day’s strategy for Lund pro Greg Yarbrough of White Lake, Mich., who’s wishing he’s able to go fishing for a five-fish limit first, then spirit off to another spot for big ones. But will it happen?

“I hope so,” Yarbrough says. “Depending on when it starts blowing, that might not happen.”

We’ll have a good idea of how the action unfolds when weigh-in starts at 3 p.m. Eastern at Waterworks Park in downtown Port Clinton.

Wednesday’s conditions

Sunrise: 6:32 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 38 degrees
Expected high temperature: upper 60s
Water temperature: 51 degrees
Wind: from the south at 9 mph
Relative humidity: 55 percent
Day’s outlook: warmer with south winds of 10-15 mph in the morning, increasing to 15-25 mph in the afternoon





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Less is more When lower weights debut at Erie RCL Tour event, the best bags go to the slow

Leaders of the pack: Pro Mark Christianson of Walker, Minn., and co-angler Kurt Turner of Kasson, Minn., outpace 159 other competitors with fish to take first place in the RCL Tour event on Erie. An additional nine teams zeroed.

By Dave Scroppo - 28.Apr.2004


PORT CLINTON, Ohio — Combating a considerable cold front, too-close-for-comfort winds and, in places, cruddy water clarity, the top performers turned tricks on the first day of the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour on Lake Erie to weigh five-fish limits of 27 pounds, 10 ounces or better to rate in the top 20.

Take leader and Lund pro Mark Christianson of Walker, Minn., who trolled up exactly five fish – and the right ones, at that – to take the tourney lead with 36 pounds, 1 ounce. A composed Christianson did it in a somewhat dicey bite with spinners and slow speeds in increasing winds as opening day progressed.

“It wasn’t all that bad,” Christianson says. “It was all right until noon, but then it got windier and windier and windier.”

Compensating for the wind, Christianson says he slid his kicker trolling motor in and out of reverse to put the brakes on his Lund in waves that grew to more than 4 feet. Even so, a weight in the mid-30s exceeded his expectations.

“With the conditions we had, I figured average fish would be good today,” Christianson says.

By Lake Erie standards, where five fish weighing more than 40 and even 50 pounds are possible, the weigh-in was somewhat substandard. After all, 30 pounds a day will normally bury an angler in a tourney here. But with the overnight cold, progressively stronger winds and shifting clouds of silt-strewn water, the leaders pulled off their coups in spite of the conditions.

Slow going

With a similar strategy for stealth, Lund pro Mark Meravy of Shorewood, Ill., likewise trolled spinners with night crawlers, his offerings dredging up a five-fish limit weighing 34 pounds, 3 ounces, good for fourth place. Muddy water, which is advancing toward the key areas north of Kelleys Island, could pose a hindrance, however, when and if the RCL pros and their co-anglers are able to fish again Thursday. Early forecasts are calling for winds of 35 mph in the morning – winds that would undoubtedly spawn dangerous 6- to 8-foot waves and continue to roil the water and visibility.

“It’s getting dirtier and dirtier,” Meravy says. “So I’m worried it’s going to get cloudy.”

With an eye to the water clarity as well was John Kolinski of Greenville, Wis., who weighed five fish for 29 pounds, 10 ounces to take 13th place.

“It’s not good and it’s not bad,” Kolinski says. “You can catch fish if you can see your prop.”

Meanwhile, one top pro who is anything but nonplussed by the declining water clarity is ninth-place Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis. Out over deep water, Grunwaldt is running both crankbaits and spinners, which are speed-compatible in the low-1-mph range and did the trick for Grunwaldt with a limit of 30 pounds, 13 ounces.

“Half of Kelleys was crud,” says Grunwaldt, who landed 10 fish. “But I don’t care about the mud. Most of the guys look for clean water. But I’ve always had good luck in the mud.”

Drift control

Besides slowing the boat with a kicker motor in reverse, another strategy that paid was putting out a pair of drift socks. With them, eighth-place finisher Mark Brumbaugh of Arcanum, Ohio, slowed his boat to the 1-mph range to procure bites from tentative walleyes that often were barely hooked – and many other anglers lost. To get the job done to the tune of 31 pounds, 2 ounces, Brumbaugh says he deployed two 25-inch Drift Control wind socks on the back if his boat and also slipped the kicker motor in and out of reverse.

The conditions, though fishable, were on the verge of mayhem.

“She was cranked up, baby,” Kolinski says. “And it’s going to get more cranked up.”

Indeed, forecasts are calling for morning winds from the southwest at speeds of 35 mph. If the conditions appear dangerous before Thursday’s start of competition, Mark Dorn, director of walleye operations for FLW Outdoors, says he will consider canceling day two when the competitors launch at 7 a.m. Eastern from Catawba State Park.

Stay tuned to find out if the wind hums and whether the water is fishable. If not, the top 20 after day one will make the cut and press on to fish the first round of the finals on Friday.





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With the threat of another day of high winds, Day Two of the 2004 RCL Qualifier at Port Clinton, OH was cancelled this morning. Day One saw winds over 20 mph all day, and left in its wake a trail of battered equipment and kicker motors. The Top 20 move on to Day Three with Mark Christianson leading the Way with over 36 lbs, and Gerrick McComsey sittting at #20 with 27+ lbs. The Day Three Live weigh-in begins at 3:00PM EST Friday.


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RCL DAY 2.......CANCELLED Let it blow....

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Great expectations The sooner – and higher – the better for semis in RCL Tour event on Erie

Cloudy but milder: A gray day dawns ahead of thunderstorms forecast for the afternoon on Lake Erie.

By Dave Scroppo - 30.Apr.2004


PORT CLINTON, Ohio — Proffering warmer temperatures, lighter winds and all-around kinder, gentler conditions compared to days past, nature’s nascent benevolence should benefit the teammates in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Erie with improved catches in the semifinals before afternoon winds zip at 20 mph and isolated thunderstorms pepper the Bass Islands area.

“I think they’re going to be biting better with the warmer weather,” says leader and Lund pro Mark Christianson of Walker, Minn., who tallied 36 pounds, 1 ounce to take a one-day fish-off before a second-day cancellation due to high winds.

Even so, it’s not known for sure how the schools will respond when competition resumes. The pods of walleyes are not likely to be in exactly the same spots as when the anglers left them two days ago, though they are expecting better results after a blow day with 80-degree temperatures that should boost the activity level three days after overnight temps dipped to the 30s.

“I’ll spend he first half hour marking fish with my electronics, and they should be biting higher today,” says ninth-place pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis. “I was getting them just below the surface in pre-fish, but all the boat pressure pushed them down.”

All that remains now are the 20 boats that made the cut after a one-day qualifying round prompted by high winds Thursday.

As it stands, most of the best weights have come with spinner rigs dressed with night crawlers. Another key ingredient has been clip-on weights, a method that not only gets the spinners down to depth but also, with placement often midway in 100 feet of line behind planer boards, absorbs a lot of the counterproductive surge that comes with wind and waves. It also allows tentative biters – a common occurrence for the competitors on day one – to take the bait for better hookups.

And while Erie in the past has offered expansive schools stretching up to a couple of miles, an inland sea undergoing a transition with fewer, smaller and more tightly congregated groups of fish makes it a must to work a school longer and more thoroughly than ever instead of trolling out of them.

“On Wednesday I found a tight pod not even half a mile long, but they were stacked,” Grunwaldt says.

Now, if the competitors find them before the conditions deteriorate come afternoon, they could undoubtedly hoist the biggest bags of the tournament. Forty-pound limits could very well cross the stage when the top 20 weigh in at 3 p.m. Eastern at Wal-Mart, 4070 E. Arbor Road in Port Clinton.

Friday’s conditions

Sunrise: 6:29 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 62 degrees
Expected high temperature: mid-70s
Water temperature: 52 degrees
Wind: south at 7 mph
Relative humidity: 65 percent
Day’s outlook: showers or thunderstorms likely; south winds 10-15 mph in the morning increasing to 10-20 mph in the afternoon





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GRUNWALDT, VOGEL LEAD WAL-MART RCL WALLEYE TOUR FINALISTS

PORT CLINTON, Ohio (April 30, 2004) — Pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., and co-angler William Vogel of Lafayette, Ind., jumped to the head of the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour pack with a five-walleye limit weighing 33 pounds, 8 ounces when fishing resumed Friday at the $401,750 tournament presented by Yamaha on Lake Erie. The duo leads 10 pros and 10 co-anglers into Saturday’s final round after 35 mph winds and a U.S. Coast Guard Small Craft Advisory forced the cancellation of Thursday’s competition.

This is the second of five RCL Tour events featuring the world’s top walleye pros and the sport’s largest payouts. The winning pro earns $90,000, including a Ranger, Crestliner or Lund boat powered by Evinrude or Yamaha, and the winning co-angler pockets $15,000 based on the heaviest two-day catch weight.

Grunwaldt and Vogle caught seven fish and lost two Friday while trolling spinner rigs off the north side of Kelleys Island, an area that was a popular target on opening day as well. Grunwaldt estimates that 15 of the 20 boats competing Friday were also in the area.

“We had two big fish right away and then a couple of small fish,” said Grunwaldt, an RCL Tour veteran who earned two top-10 finishes last season. “After that we went a few long hours without a bite. We are doing something a little different than the rest of the guys, but I’m not going to play it safe.”

Grunwaldt and Vogle entered Friday’s semifinal round as the No. 9 seeds after catching five walleyes weighing 30 pounds, 13 ounces on opening day.

“It was a pretty tough day, so this feels good,” said Vogle, who finished 11th at last season’s Lake Erie stop. “We need all of the cushion that we can get.”

Rounding out the top five final-round qualifiers are pro Dennis Jeffrey of Garrison, N.D., and co-angler Thomas Bower of Macedonia, Ohio (five walleyes, 27 pounds, 14 ounces); pro Jason Przekurat of Stevens Point, Wis., and co-angler Keith Keivens of Toledo, Ohio (five walleyes, 25 pounds, 4 ounces); pro Thomas Nordyke of Newport, Mich., and co-angler Charles Dahl of Burlington, Wis. (five walleyes, 25 pounds, 3 ounces); and pro Scott Allar of Welch, Minn., and co-angler Chester Jones of Michigan City, Ind. (five walleyes, 24 pounds, 4 ounces).

Pros and co-anglers are randomly paired, and cash awards are presented to the top 60 anglers in each division. A total of 348 anglers representing 22 states and Canada participated in the tournament.

The final takeoff starts at 7 Saturday morning from Catawba Island State Park in Port Clinton, and the final weigh-in starts at 4 p.m. at the Wal-Mart store located at 4070 E. Harbor Road in Port Clinton.

Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour anglers compete in four regular-season tournaments in their quest to qualify for the $1.4 million Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Championship on the Mississippi River in Moline, Ill., Sept. 29-Oct. 2 where the world’s top pros will fish for as much as $400,000 cash and co-anglers will chase as much as $150,000 cash. The total purse for the 2004 RCL Tour is $3.19 million.

FLW Outdoors administers the RCL Tour, which is named after boat manufacturers Ranger, Crestliner and Lund. FLW Outdoors, the world’s leading marketer of competitive fishing, is named after the legendary founder of Ranger Boats, Forrest L. Wood. Other FLW Outdoors-sanctioned tournament trails include the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye League for weekend anglers; the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, the world’s most lucrative bass-tournament series; the EverStart Series, designed as a pathway to the FLW Tour; the Wal-Mart Bass Fishing League for weekend anglers; and the Wal-Mart Texas Tournament Trail.

Wal-Mart and many of America’s most respected companies support FLW Outdoors and its six tournament trails. Wal-Mart has been the title sponsor of FLW Outdoors since 1997.

For more information about the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour, visit FLWOutdoors.com or call (270) 252-1000.

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Reach the deep :cool: ;)

By Dave Scroppo - 01.May.2004


PORT CLINTON, Ohio — Ranger pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., is out in front with a cushion of almost 6 pounds headed into the finals of the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Erie. And so the other nine chasing the leader know that now is the time to make their move not only in the standings but also with their locations.

“I’m going to move,” says 2003 RCL Angler of the Year Jason Przekurat of Stevens Point, Wis., trailing Grunwaldt in third place with 25 pounds, 4 ounces – down by 8 pounds, 4 ounce.

On the other hand, Grunwaldt is aiming for the status quo – a bag over 30 pounds, in the same place off Kelleys Island, not changing one iota.

“Same old, same old,” Grunwaldt says. “Same program. I’m going to the same area I went on day one.”

That’s when Grunwaldt qualified for the top-20 cut in a one-day shootout when the next day was canceled due to high winds. For starters, Grunwaldt weighed 30 pounds, 13 ounces. On Friday he boosted his catch, tallying 33 pounds, 8 ounces, to rise above all others remaining.

The closest is second-place Dennis Jeffrey of Garrison, N.D.

Catching Grunwaldt, and the big weight necessary to do it, isn’t going to be easy given the leader’s trolling proficiency in a known big-fish area and in wind and a steady rain.

The finals will no doubt be a discomfiting day given the wet and waves. All of the competitors have at least a half-hour run to Kelleys Island and the deep water around it, where the best schools of walleyes are currently located.

Another factor Grunwaldt and his nine closest associates are up against is tentative fish that are barely biting spinner rigs and sometimes barely budging planer boards. Even when they do and bury the board, sinking it like a bobber, they are often coming off.

That’s a problem that faced the leader after the qualifying round; Lund pro Mark Christianson of Walker, Minn., said Friday he lost fish that tweaked the planing device and one big one that took it underwater.

For Grunwaldt’s part, he managed seven fish Friday, two more than the five-fish limit, 20 to 35 feet down over 40 feet of water. Which is rather uncharacteristic on Erie, when the most active walleyes often cruise in the top 10 feet hunting baitfish. Now they seem to be lounging in the depths, where it’s taking Grunwaldt’s precision trolling to outdistance the rest of the field.

On Saturday it will be with the same thing, in the same place, as he goes to the well one more time.

The top 10 return to Catawba State Park at 3 p.m. Eastern and the weigh-in begins thereafter at Wal-Mart, 4070 E. Arbor Road.

Saturday’s conditions

Sunrise: 6:28 a.m.
Temperature at takeoff: 64 degrees
Expected high temperature: upper 60s
Water temperature: 49-51 degrees
Wind: southwest at 14 mph
Relative humidity: 83 percent
Day’s outlook: occasional showers and thunderstorms; southwest winds 10-15 mph this morning, becoming northwest in the afternoon





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Grunwaldt finds fish, relocates, gets them to go with twin rigs on each line to win RCL

By Dave Scroppo - 01.May.2004


PORT CLINTON, Ohio — With the consistency of three consecutive 30-pound bags – not four due to a day lost to high winds – Ranger pro Carl Grunwaldt of Green Bay, Wis., scaled the ladder to its pinnacle Saturday, winning the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Erie.

Demonstrating his trolling acumen and the resourcefulness to tweak a setup that employed two lures on one line, Grunwaldt piled 30 pounds, 13 ounces on top of his lead from the semifinals to earn $50,000 and a fully rigged Ranger boat with a Yamaha outboard.

In doing so, Grunwaldt outpaced the second-place finisher, 2003 RCL Angler of the Year Jason Przekurat of Stevens Point, Wis., by 6 pounds, 2 ounces over days three and four.

Among the secrets to Grunwaldt’s success were finding the fish, deciphering the best method to dupe them, relocating them when they moved, and fighting them with aplomb when lost fish were pervasive for the rest of the field. To wit, Saturday started slowly for Grunwaldt when the school he had been working off the northeast of Kelleys Island split the scene and it took him time to find them.

“I went looking for them for an hour and a half,” Grunwaldt says. “It was a pretty tight school I had on Wednesday and today they were gone. Almost a mile away, there they were. They were stacked.”

Grunwaldt spotted them on his Garmin color locator, an asset that earned him an additional $1,000 bonus with the win, and then started two-timing them. On each of four rods, with setups allowable under Ohio law and RCL rules, Grunwaldt ran three-way rigs with a crankbait on a dropper and a spinner rig on a trailing line.

For the cranks, Grunwaldt ran Matzuo Deep Zander Shads and Reef Runners. For the spinners, he went with red, orange and purple beads and blades. Grunwaldt says 80 percent of the fish came on the spinners, but some of the biggest and best hit the crankbaits. The rigs were set 80 to 120 feet behind planer boards to target fish at a specific level over 40 feet of water.

“I found the biters were at 20 to 25 feet, but you’d mark them all over the place,” Grunwaldt says. “Which is a little different. Usually I target them in the top 10 feet, and usually the fish I catch I never mark.”

Also, when trolling, Grunwaldt slipped his auxiliary gas trolling motor in and out of gear to achieve a snail’s pace of 0.8-1 mph.

Fighting the good fight

Grunwaldt benefited from a steady hand and deft control of his rods when fighting fish, something he did rather than turn over the task to his co-angler. The strategy paid off not only for Grunwaldt but also for his co-angler on days one and three, eventual winner William Vogel of Lafayette, Ind. On Saturday, Vogel fished with fourth-place finisher Scott Allar, both of whom weighed 24 pounds, 13 ounces.

With Allar, Vogel continued the practice of letting his pro reel while he netted.

“The No. 1 thing in this tournament was that everyone was trolling and losing fish,” Vogel says. “What Carl and I did, since he was used to fishing these fish, we had him reel and I netted.”

Vogel also gives credit to Grunwaldt for being able to stay with the nomadic fish of Erie whenever they made a move.

“It’s a matter of locating and relocating the fish,” Vogel says. “I think for this particular tournament the bite was really off.”

Rattle and hum

In spite of the light bites, the top 10 in the finals figured a way to catch them around Kelleys and another productive area, the Gull Island Shoal. The overwhelming technique among them was trolling spinners with night crawlers behind inline weights and planer boards.

Most common, as noted by Scott Allar, was chartreuse spinners with chartreuse beads behind 2-ounce weights set 35 or 40 feet behind planer boards. It’s likely that they targeted the same level Grunwaldt was achieving with his rigs.

Of the top 10, the top nine all weighed limits in the finals, an improvement from day three, when 11 of the 20 competing failed to bring in limits. Only one of them, the eventual ninth-place finisher, Ranger pro Mark Brumbaugh of Arcanum, Ohio, failed to weigh a limit Friday. On Saturday, only 10th-place pro Mark Keenan of Appleton, Wis., brought in a bag shy of a limit, with three fish for 13 pounds.

Ultimately, it was Grunwaldt’s two-timing rig with both spinners and crankbaits that sealed the deal and his first victory on the RCL.

“The crankbaits were the attractant and the trigger,” says Grunwaldt, who attributes much of his success to the crankbait’s rattle and hum.

When they bit, Grunwaldt brought the fish in nice and easy on Cabela’s 9 1/2-foot XML trolling rods designed for salmon and steelhead while complementing them with constant adjustment of the reel’s drag.

“I keep my finger on the star drag all the time,” Grunwaldt says. “When the fish want to make a run, I back way off and let them take it.”

And so it is that the Grunwaldt’s tournament win was found, not lost.





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