We went to Detroit River, caught some fish, bombed the Bass Pro Shop Cabela’s Detroit River MWC Tournament, and came home,” is how I felt when I sat down to file our trip report for Walleye Wisdom. But that would be too easy and leave out some of our highs and lows during the past week. Friend Mark Alexander and I left from his home early Monday morning, April 8th, for Detroit. Mark retired over a year ago from a long engineering career at Deere and Co. We share a kinship as fellow graduates of Iowa State University. Mark fished the NWT events last year as a co-angler and we worked together with the Pro team of Chris, Victor, Steve, and Tyler. He traveled with fishing friends Dave Nichols from Cedar Rapids and Terry Hora from Iowa City. Mark and I teamed up for our first tournament event together and worked with Dave and Terry who have fished Detroit more times than we have. My last time to Detroit was back in the day with Chris Burns when we fished a FLW Walleye Tour event in 2007. We fished the River Tuesday and had a really good day on the water. We caught multiple nice walleye and I jigged up the largest fish I’ve ever caught on a jig–a plump 28 1/2 incher! We tried pulling three-way rigs in a couple areas but had no bites so stuck with the jigging. On Wednesday, we continued to practice new spots and caught multiple walleyes we kept to clean and take home for a future dinner. Wednesday night I came down with a severe cold, went to bed, and didn’t get up until Thursday night! In over 100 tournament events, I’ve never been so sick before an event. Mark was able to fish with Dave and Terry on Thursday and he went to the registration and rules meeting for us at the Cabela’s store in Dundee. Our first tournament day was Friday–we fished hard but caught no fish. We went to our areas we found during practice to find the water had turned dirty from the heavy south winds. We then went looking for “clean” water. Mark helped me stay positive after a tough day and we regrouped looking forward to catching some fish for “points”. But Saturday was worse for us!! We went to clean water spots we had fished the day before to watch those around us pull them in while we could not get a bite. We made a move up to Detroit to fish around the GM Center and on the last big bump on our way there, my Lowrance graphs went BLACK and I lost all dash gauges!! Mark did a heroic job manning the bowmount Ulterra because the front graph would work. Again, we could not get bit while others would catch. We decided to head back to the launch and seek some help with the loss of our electronics. I’ve never seen so many boats, large and small, fishing “community” spots as we headed back to Elizabeth Park! Then, I remembered it was Saturday and how anglers by the thousands come to the Detroit River every spring to fill their coolers. Captain Ron Hunter with Lowrance came down to meet us at the dock. Ron crawled underneath the Ranger 620 counsel and started cutting zip ties to unbundle all the wiring. Finally, he located the loose wire connector which powered the gauges and electronics. Special thanks to Ron and Lowrance–he was the ONLY support person at this event! We used to have support trailers from Ranger and the boat engine manufacturers at all our events. I don’t get it–what has happened? Maybe someone can fill me in why the support we used to have is no longer available. Enough “-itching”! Mark and I looked at each other and decided with the time we had left, to put the Ranger on the trailer. Did we give up or just choose to not fish any more? Fortunately, Dave and Terry did catch one fish on Day 2 so we thanked them for their efforts over Saturday night dinner! Sunday morning found us hitching the boat up in heavy rain. When we came to south Chicago, the snow started and we drove in very difficult conditions all the way to Geneseo, Il. We saw many vehicles in the ditch and came upon a terrible accident of a semi and car forcing three lanes of traffic down to one with people driving over broken car and truck parts to keep moving. We were relieved to get out of the snow and dropped Mark off at his home in Eldridge, IA to a green and growing front lawn! I made it home ok but was too tired to unload all the gear from the Ranger. So, I spent Monday, the 15th, unloading then cleaning up the boat. I’m off to Bob’s Marine in Bellevue, IA to get the wiring issue repaired plus a couple other items not tournament damage related. Kudos to the anglers who caught fish and did well at Detroit. Will we fish another MWC event this year? Unsure but Mark and I both look forward to fishing the NWT event at Lake Winnebago May 2-3! Thank you for reading this report and hope you enjoy the pics we took. -Spike
