Teams Head Out for Final Day of the Cabelas MWC Championship
Wayne Butz and Don Frederick Lead the Field on Day 3
It's the final day of competition here on Lake Erie as the Cabelas MWC Championship grears up to crown a team "World Champions" this afternoon.
After two brutal days on the water, consisting of long runs, and bumpy rides, the teams that are leading the field of anglers, are those that ran to the East side of Kelly's Island where they found cleaner water and a mile long pod of fish.
Big fish are moving back from the East as they begin to migrate back to the West end of the lake, where they get ready to spawn in the Spring, so making the long runs to the East side of the islands was really the only option if a team wanted to win this event.
I spoke to some of the leaders this morning to find out exactly what they have been using to catch fish this week. Below are their responses:
I ran into Steve and Dan Bodinger in the lobby of the Days Inn, where they were fueling up on waffles, coffee, and other continental offerings.
Juls: Good morning, you two. Steve, how did your day go on the water yesterday? What's your game plan today, and since no one will see this until you guys are long gone today, can you tell our Walleye Central readers how exactly you and your brother, Dan, were catching your fish this week?
 Steve(R): Our day on the water yesterday was kind of slow starting out. We didn't catch anything on our first spot, so we moved from there at about 11am. We went to our second spot and caught a fish on the first pass, and then caught another one on the second pass. Then, we hit a double, or something like that, and we ended up just catching 6 fish there, and they were obviously the right fish, so we headed in.
Today, our game plan is to go back where we caught those fish, and hopefully they are still there and biting!
Juls: What are they biting for you?
Steve: We might be doing things a little bit different than a lot of the other guys....we're actually trolling crankbaits, "Reef Runners". We're running those anywhere from 40' to 100' back. It's just simple old school trolling...just running the baits through pods of active fish, and getting some to bite.
Juls: And, your pod of active fish is how far from here?
Steve: Well, as the crow flies, about 42 miles. So, that puts us on the East side of Kelly's Island just below the Canadian line...in that area.
Juls: Dan, what do you think about the better weather expected today?
Dan(L): Ah, I like it, but I'm a little nervous. They said that it's supposed to pick up out of the Northwest this afternoon, so that's what we heard....5-15mph. So, that makes me a little nervous. That could make for a very rough ride in again.
The day 2 leaders, Wayne Butz and Don Frederick (pictured at the top of the page), were one of the last few to put their boat in the water this morning, so it gave me a little time to chat with them about their game plan today.
Juls: Morning Wayne and Don, did you get a good night's sleep last night?
Wayne: Yeah, not too bad. (laughs)
Juls: What's the game plan today?
Wayne: It's going to be a little bit of a rough ride, so we're going to lose a lot of time traveling today, so hopefully, when we get there, we hope the bite goes pretty quick.
Don: It's been an early bite for us too. We have to get them by 11 o'clock otherwise it shuts down. All we need is one good pass. (laughs) It's a long ride (said with the emphasis on "Long").
Juls: How long do you think it will take you to get to your spot?
Wayne: We'll be pushing two hours.
Juls: What exactly are you doing to catch your fish?
Wayne: Mostly we've been running one splitshot...sometimes, two. We're targeting the top ten foot of the water column. That's where most of the active fish have been hanging out for us. We're running spinners with crawlers in brighter colors like the pinks, purples, and chartreuse combos about 15-20' behind the in line planer boards.
The Father/Son team of Dave and Willie Casper are going out in third place today, and only 6 pounds behind the leaders.
 Willie: Yesterday was slow for us. We got three fish on our original spot from the day before. Then, we made a move. We had the cameraman in the boat, and he seemed to be good luck for us, and we pulled our last two fish.
Today, we're still undecided which spot we're going to start with. It's supposed to build up later this afternoon, so we want 5 fish early, and hopefully, we can upgrade from there.
Juls: Can you share with our readers how you've been catching your fish this week?
Dave: We're using harnesses...20 back. We're using 1 oz inline weights. The colors keep changing on us constantly. We just keep changing up until we get something, or figure out the right program of what they want. We think we're dialed in pretty good, and we're consistant. And, we're hoping that that's going to do it.
 Matt Davis and Dan Gies are the MWC Team of the Year this year, and they are once again in the top 5. Also only about 6 pounds out of the lead, this dynamic duo could be a strong contender for this title too. No strangers to Lake Erie and her sublte mood changes, Matt and Dan will surly be a team to watch at weigh in this afternoon.
Juls: Morning! How was your day on the water yesterday? Who wants to go first?
Dan: Morning, Juls. We had a good day on the water yesterday. We caught a lot of fish, and they stayed "buttoned up" all the way to the boat, and that's what helped us get a good weight.
Juls: What about your take on the day yesterday, Matt?
Matt: It was good! (Chuckles) Yeah, we handled a lot of big fish, and it went a lot better than the first day.
Juls: Ok, no one will see this till you're both long gone. Care to tell our WC readers what you're doing out there to catch your fish?
Matt: We're taking a long boat ride, about 50 miles, to Dan's backyard. We're about 2 miles out from his house. We're just running crawler harnesses with inline weights behind planer boards. It's the Lake Erie pattern....Colorado blades. It's going to be another bumpy ride. They said there were 3 footers at the bouy right now.
Juls: Are you fishing up high in the water column, or are you just looking at the sonar and keeping your baits just above the fish you see? What's your program?
Matt: The fish have been all over. The first day they were really high, but yesterday, they came deep. That put all of our weigh fish in.
Juls: When you went deep, what did you do? Did you go with heavier inline weights? Or, did you put bottom bouncers out?
Matt: We went with heavier with the inlines and used longer leads on our 1oz inlines, and went to two ounces on some. The fish were high yesterday, but we couldn't get them. We had been getting super high fish, but for some reason the fish that were deep yesterday were the only ones that bit.
Juls: Ok, so all week you've been getting your fish high, at what point, or what was the "ah hah" moment that told you to go deep with your baits?
Matt: We got one or two hookups the first day down deep. And, so we started out with one lure down deep yesterday, and it fired pretty quick. Once it took a second fish, then we moved all our board lines deep and left our sliders high, so we still covered the entire water column with baits. The sliders (aka stackers) just didn't go for us.
Juls: Want to explain what sliders are?
Dan: By using "Sliders" we can run 8 baits off of 4 rods. What it is is basically an 18-30' lead that is attached to the main line of a rod by a clip/release about 10-15 feet ahead of the planer board. The lines must stay attached to the rod line until the fish is brought in, or it constitutes an illegal line.
 The day one leaders, Jeff Koester(R) and Scott Rhodes(L), fell from first place to 6th place, and have a bigger deficit to overcome, but don't count them out yet. Big fish have been caught in the area that this team is fishing, so they could very easily come back today with close to 40 pounds.
Juls: How was your day on the water yesterday, Jeff?
Jeff: We got the bites yesterday. We just lost a tremendous amount of fish. They actually buried the board, and you know, we'd bring them in and as soon as the board would hit the surface they would just pop off. I don't know how many fish we lost, but it was quite a few. I think we had one fish at about 11, and then we got into an active pod at about 1 o'clock and we were able to pull three more.
Today? Today's kind of up in the air. We're sitting there thinking, "We could probably make the run again", but it was pretty rough yesterday, when we came home, a lot more surprising as we came around Catawba Island, over and above what we had anticipated. And, the wind blew pretty hard all night, actually. Almost twice as hard as when we came in, so I think there's going to be some pretty good rollers out there right now, and to get to our spot, which is about 50 plus miles away, it would take us a couple hours. To get out there and get back, it's probably going to be worse than the first day, when I mentioned we could only make two passes. I think we would only get one pass and it's going to be time to come home.
Even though they are calling for it to deminish this afternoon....I don't think we would get enough time to do what we need to do out there. So, I think we are going to switch it up, and run about 9 miles up the Michigan shoreline. There's a school of fish there, but the water's been really dirty. The Detroit River has been pumping clean water now for a couple days, so we're going to go up there and take our chances and try to get 5 bites. We hope the other guys go out there and are only able to make one pass, and catch two fish, and have to come back. (laughs)
If it lays down a little bit, then we'll go to our second spot out by Middle Island. There'll be fish there.
Juls: What are you guys doing to catch your fish?
Jeff: We're pulling spinners. All week we've been pulling spinners. We got on a really high fish bite. We're using small inline weights and splitshots ahead of the spinners and we're targeting that top ten foot. 11 feet back on a 1/2 oz. at 1.2 -1.4 mph. So, those baits are only 2 feet underneath the surface, over about 35-40 foot of water.
We got on that pattern on Monday afternoon, and then our practice on Tuesday, my Dad flew in from New Mexico, so he just wanted to go catch some fish. I knew there was some fish down at Huron, and I said, "Let's just go have some fun today"!
I threw one out about 11' back and caught a nice 9 1/2 pounder. Threw another one out and caught another big fish, so I said, "You know what? Our starting spot may have just changed"! (laughs)
We're just going to go have some fun today. We're going to go fishing and let the cards fall where they will fall.
Today's forecast is:
West winds 5-10 knots. Sunny during the morning. Partly sunny during the afternoon. Waves around 1 foot.
Join us here on Walleye Central as we bring you continued Live coverage of the Cableas Masters Walleye Circuit in Dundee, MI. You can watch the weigh in through our live webstream of the event at www.liveleaderboard.com . Just click on the "Lake Erie-Detroit River" link in the current MWC event listed there. That will take you to the roster that is updated after each team weighs in, and it will also take you to the video window and chatroom window.
Each day the team that brings in the largest fish wins a $500.00 gift certificate donated by Cabelas.
Today's Sponsor Bonus Awards are handed out too, and I will let you know who wins them and how much they are worth later today.
A special thanks goes out to the Cabelas Dundee Store for their help with making the Live Internet Web Stream available to our viewing audience here on WC. So, the next time you're in the area, stop in the store that brings you more than just cool merchandise, and say, "Thanks"! :)
To check out the 2010 Cabelas MWC Schedule, please visit their site at www.masterswalleyecircuit.com.
The weigh in is expected to begin this afernoon at 4:15PM Eastern Time. | 
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