Weather: Slight south breeze, clear, 50’s
Moon Phase: Full Moon
Location: Starvation Reservoir
Water Temp: 73 degrees
Bait: jigs tipped with worm, trolling crankbaits
Who Went: Rick, Me
I finally had a chance to fish in one of the tournaments that my club puts on every year and it was one that I’ve always wanted to participate in, The Full Moon at Starvation Tournament. I’ve heard good things about Starvation during the summer on a full moon and now was my chance to see for myself. The tournament went from 7 p.m. Friday night to 7 a.m. Saturday morning. Rick was my partner and we both went into the tourney blind having never fished Starvation at night. We had about 2 hours of daylight after we launched so we scurried around to all the points and islands and marked them on my GPS making it easier to navigate once darkness hit. The full moon kept it pretty light outside and we had no trouble moving around. Rick got us started by landing the smallest walleye I have ever seen in my life. It was too small to count towards our tournament total, but it was a walleye none the less.
After jigging every ridge and point from shallow to deep with minimal success, Rick got on the phone and called one of the guys from our club that was fishing the tournament to see if they were having any success. Of course they were, and it was doing something completely different than what we were doing. They were trolling crankbaits in 6-10 feet of water. Rick and I didn’t want to resort to trolling, but figured we better try just to put some fish in the boat. We ended up spending the rest of the night trolling the same shoreline with crankbaits and putting about 1 walleye in the boat on each pass… or should I say, Rick did! I hooked one walleye and got him halfway to the boat before he made a quick release. Rick landed about 6 walleye with the biggest at 15 ½ inches. The minimum fish you could count in the tourney was 12 inches. Rick had 3 keepers and we knew we had no chance of placing in the tournament.I had a tough time finding a lure in my box that would reach the correct depth to catch them. We were trolling in 10 feet of water and I was either getting snagged on the mossy bottom with deep diving cranks or running to high in the water column with shallow diving cranks. Rick had two crankbaits that seemed to be running right in the strike zone. Pays to have the right gear I suppose. After the tourney Rick made phone calls to other Rocky Mountain Angler members to get there reports and feedback from the tournament. It seems we were the only boat that struggled in the tournament with most teams catching 30-40 walleye. After hearing their reports of successful tactics, I feel a little more confident that we might be able to go up there again and duplicate their success. The whole point of joining the Rocky Mountain Anglers Club is to fish with the best walleye fisherman in the state and learn from the experts about how to catch these elusive fish!!! I’m starting to gain a real hatred for these fish and the feelings seem to be mutual!
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