| | Neither Wayne Van Dyke or partner Bruce Mueller had ever fished Big or Little Bay de Noc prior to coming to the area for the Cabela’s NTC and MWC tournaments. They struggled prefishing and zeroed yesterday in an area they were sure they would do well in. Little did they know that their luck was about to change today.
They headed out to a spot they had found prefishing and in an hour and a half spurt landed six solid fish and lost another. The five they weighed were enough to put them in first place in both tournaments with 36.10lbs, which is three pounds ahead of second place.
They were trolling Bugsy blades, which provide a good flash, but color didn’t seem to matter. What did matter was their speed. The team kept it tight at 1.1-1.2mph. While they are happy with their lead today, they know that tomorrow is another day and that the conditions will have to be right to get another nice basket.
 The day went well for the husband and wife team of Kevin and Karen McQuiod who are in second place in both tournaments by weighing 32.94lbs. They caught a total of six fish pulling spinners on the shoals. While prefishing was ok, they didn’t beat up spots, but got nice fish in little pockets. While they could have made mile long passes today, they just made short ones concentrating on those pockets.
During prefishing, they found that a different spinner worked best each day, so it was important not to be married to one in particular. They are going to head back to the same spot tomorrow and try to duplicate what they did today, but know that that can be difficult to do on this body of water.
 Local husband and wife team Glenn and Carol Chenier had a day that went surprisingly well. After getting nothing on their first spot, they moved to their second spot where they were getting doubles and triples. Said Glenn, “I underestimated the quality we were catching and went to our big fish spot, which in retrospect was a mistake.” Since they knew boat pressure would be an issue they avoided community holes and went to places that were less crowded. They weighed 29.55lbs.
Ryan and Tom Jirk had a tough time prefishing, as they had been banking on a bite on Big Bay de Noc. Today was much different than prefishing, starting off with a bang by catching five fish early. However, with the flat water and clear skies, as soon as other boats made their way to the area, the fish moved out. It then took a new spot and six hours of trolling to catch another fish. They weighed 27.52lbs.
Jeff Vereeke and Joe Lockman caught one small one on their first pass, and weren’t seeing what they wanted so they moved out. Said Vereeke, “And it was game on! It was Chinese fire drills! We keyed in on a program and next thing you know we had all the same baits on. They were very color sensitive.” He explained by saying, “I’ve been up here for awhile and there were two colors that were working very good. We had them both out today and then we realized one wasn’t working.” Tomorrow he feels that there will be a lot of traffic in the area because there were a lot of boats that came on the spot at the end of the day. Their total weight was 30.89lbs.
 Don and Cheryl Weaver went to their first spot and after an hour had just decided to move when all of the sudden a fish took the board under. “I never looked at the fish because I get too nervous doing that,” said Don. However, Cheryl had to look to net it. All she could think was, “I better get it in or I’ll have to walk home.” While Cheryl was netting the fish another board went back and they caught a five pounder. They only stayed another hour since they knew from prefishing that when those fish hit they were moving off the spot. They then moved to another spot and caught two more.
Today was better than expected, because two weeks ago when they were prefishing they were catching lots of big fish, but as the boat pressure increased, the bite decreased. Speed was important today. “They wanted it slow. There were no big hits. They just picked it up, except for the big fish,” said Don. Their four fish weighed 20.64lbs.
Join us tomorrow on Walleye Central for continued coverage of both tournaments.
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