Two tournaments at Spring Valley, IL., in three weeks! That’s where I found myself in March, 2018! The first tournament was a combined event with the Walleye Anglers Trail (Dubuque) and the Illinois Walleye Trail on March 11, 2018. My tournament partner for the WAT events this year is J.D. Knight from Cedar Falls, IA. J.D. has a lot of River fishing experience so we decided to work together this year on the WAT side. We had a good practice day together augmented with another practice day when my Cabela’s MWC partner, Tom Harrison, from Naperville, IL joined me for a day. This year, we’ve teamed with the father/son duo of Jerry and BJ Eiben from Dubuque. Long story short: Jerry and BJ won the event with a six fish limit weighing 13.42 pounds. They were pulling Double Raps and so were we in the same general area. They got bit and we didn’t. They won $2510 for the efforts on a flooded river system recovering from earlier heavy rains. JD and I finished 23rd out of 39 boats with five fish that weighted 9.99 lbs. Because of the current flow, we used 4,5, and 6 ounce weights to keep the Raps down. Our best colors were Chart/White and Purpleescient. After a one week break, I headed back to SV on the 17th to practice for the Cabelas’s Masters Walleye Circuit and was joined the next day by Chris Speicher and his good friend, Dave Zapf, on a beautiful sunny 53-degree day. They helped me put the Ranger 620 in the water at the Spring Valley Boat Club. We had some success enjoying a fine fellowship day on and off the water. That night, friend Tracy Hayward came to the Holiday Inn Express in Peru and fished the next three days with me and Tom when he joined us on Wednesday. Tom and I finalized our game plan on the 22nd and were ready to FISH on the 23rd! We managed a five fish limit but did not get the big “girls”. Our next day of fishing was on hold waiting for the tournament officials to make a weather call. We learned early Saturday morning it was a GO! Never, never, never have we fished in the tough east winds plus numerous snow storm events. Anglers came to the weigh-in at the Boat Club with two to four inches or more of snow in their boats!! But, even though the weather was tough on us, the fish didn’t care. We managed to catch three keepers and finished 55th out of 81 boats. Our combined two-day weight was 16.03 while the tournament winners, Jeff Lahr and his stand in partner, had a two day limit weighing 27.09 pounds. Please go to the MWC website to check out the complete results for the first MWC event of the season. In hindsight, we agreed we should have done more jigging and trolling which seemed to be the ticket for those teams catching limits both days. There are some beautiful Sauger in the Illinois River along with bonus walleyes! Hope you enjoy the pics Mike G. has added to this report. I’ll work to keep you posted on our next WAT, MWC, and NWT (fishing as a co-angler) events the rest of the season. Tight lines! Spike
