North Dakota Trap Attack Story
Targeting transient walleyes from just outside tournament boundaries
brings victory for newly-formed team
By Mark Strand
Devils
Lake, ND— Pre-event recon outside tournament boundaries gave Kevin
Schick and Steve Webb confidence to set up away from clusters of competitors
and win the 2006 Gander Mountain Super Trap Attack on Devils Lake.
The newly-formed team brought in a limit of 8 walleyes weighing 15.82 pounds.
A key strategy employed by Schick and Webb during practice: check to see
what lurked just outside the area they would have to fish during competition.
“There were a ton of fish out there (just beyond the boundaries),”
said Webb. “We knew some of those fish had to be moving up and down
that point.”
By studying a Devils Lake contour map, the team saw that an extended point led to the end of tournament boundaries and had a physical connection to the out-of-bounds concentration of walleyes.
“We moved right past them (the crowd of competitors) out to 27 feet,” said Webb, Jerome, MI, “and caught maybe 10 fish, including some of our bigger ones.”
They fished close to cones marking the playing field, along a deep sand/gravel flat. Much of Devils Lake is soft bottom, but Schick and Webb found the harder-bottom area by drilling lots of holes in practice and looking with an Aqua-Vu camera and Vexilar flasher. Said Webb: “There must have been a beach there at one time.”
(Due to high-water cycle, Devils Lake has tripled in surface-acre size since 1993.)
Schick, Beaver Dam, WI, is a rising star on the sport’s biggest stage. He consistently qualifies for Ice Team’s Championship, and this is the second time he has won the Devils Lake event. He stressed the importance of getting away from human activity.
“We had other (productive) spots, too,” he said, “but there were a lot of people on them, so we stayed out there where we could fish by ourselves.”
Schick and Webb used small horizontal, minnow-shaped jigging lures in perch and firetiger patterns.
Shallow Trees: Another Key
Most teams also discovered another pattern—walleyes relating to cover and food in flooded trees. The top finishers all began the morning jigging in the trunks and branches of shallow-water trees.
Runners-up Ron Manson (Valley City, ND) and Monte Kerzman (Toronto, SD) noted that the shallow tree bite was best at early morning. “We knew that from practice,” said Kerzman. “You had to get in there and get your fish in the first hour or two, because it really slowed down after that. We caught our biggest fish right away.”
They used rattling jigging spoons, tipped with a minnow head or perch eye. Key colors were pink and orange/yellow.
“We started about two or three inches off the bottom,” explained Kerzman. “We’d lightly jig it, and then pull it about eight inches up and let it drop back down.
Then we’d tap it, so the rattles would shake. When a fish would show up on the Vexilar, we’d slowly pull it upward, give it a little rattle, try to get them to chase it up.”
(Manson and Kerzman also have a history of versatility and consistency, having finished fourth in this same event a year ago, when the target fish were jumbo perch.)
Much of the field vacated the shallow trees by late morning. If they continued to fish flooded trees, they moved out into deeper water, about 10-14 feet. But not the third-place team of Dennis and Chris Kassube. These Trap Attack veterans believe walleyes remain in the shallow trees all day.
Even after the peak morning bite has slowed, “our theory is that those (shallow tree) fish are the most active ones,” said Dennis Kassube. “We just covered as much ground as possible, drilling a lot of holes, fishing quickly. We’d hit a hole that produced three or four fish, and then it would quit. We just kept going, get a fish here and there, and kept adding them up that way.”
A key difference in the Kassube’s approach: their extremely aggressive jigging style. They, too, used rattling jigging spoons, in “reddish and pinkish glow colors,” said Dennis. “Because it was so warm, we didn’t have to be in our Fish Traps. We just carried our rods and Vexilar and we only gave each hole three or four minutes to produce.
“We never quit moving. We hunted aggressive fish all day long. We kept our jigs about a foot or two off the bottom and shook the daylights out of them. People were talking about how hard we were working our lures.”
If anything, remarked Dennis, “our fish even went shallower as the day progressed. We never fished deeper than nine feet, and most of our fish came in seven or less. You can catch an awful lot of walleyes if you cover ground in the timber.”
Notes: Devils Lake was the first stop on the Gander Mountain
Super Trap Attack series this winter. At each tournament, top 15 two-person
teams win berths in next winter’s North American Ice Fishing Championship.
Next stop is the sold-out competition on Wamplers Lake near Brooklyn, Michigan,
set for Jan. 28-29.
For results and information on entering any remaining events, go to ww.iceteam.com.
Ice Team partners include Gander Mountain, Vexilar, StrikeMaster, Fish Trap, Clam, Ice Armor, Aqua-Vu, Genz Stix, Buzz Stix, Lindy, Arctic Cat, Mr. Heater, Floe, Arctic Fisherman, and Alexandria, Minnesota.
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FINAL RESULTS – TOP 15
Gander Mountain Super Trap Attack
Devils Lake, ND, Jan. 15, 2006
Name Weight (pounds) Prize Money
1. Kevin Schick/Steve Webb 15.82 $3,000
2. Monte Kerzman/Ron Manson 15.30 $1,500
3. Dennis Kassube/Chris Kassube 15.13 $600
4. Pete Venturi/Glen Delorme Jr 13.54 $300
5. Nicole Linkfield/Jeremy Ballard 12.05 $225
6. Phil Davis/Scott Phipps 11.62 $150
7. Scott Neubert/David Neubert 11.56 $150
8. Jason Mitchell/Tory Holen 11.50 $150
9. Mark Slotto/Merle Rainsberry 10.85 $150
10. Mike Zickermann/Keith Kuebelbeck 10.29 $150
11. Robert Cunningham/Roy Cox 10.20 $90
12. Thomas Hodous/James Rusten 9.06 $90
13. Ray Legatt/Joe Honer 8.74 $90
14. Brenton Hell/Matt Hell 7.48 $90
15. Jack Baker/Grete Baker 7.44 $90
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