The Walleye Incursion

I took “the boy”, Nick, on a local fishing trip recently. You’d think I have this type of thing down. A simple incursion into walleye territory for an evening raid should be a relaxing affair. But first we had to hit the “S4”, for supplies. Proper preparations for this, particular, invasion became quite involved. It turned into a savaging patrol with a route that led us over State lines to encounter the proper minnows. We managed to find a few large minnows, actually young suckers, to fish with after some looking. (We knew they were young suckers because when we walked into the store and up to the minnow tank, we heard a cashier say, “Look, there are some young suckers”). We got a deal though because we insisted there were six and he kept saying there were two. So we took the six and paid the money. But, of course, the sucker peddler didn’t have worms. We don’t have this problem locally, but we were launching our operations from within striking distance of Walleye territory, you would think there would be a thriving competitive bait industry. Besides if you can get minnows and worms in such a relatively dry place as Emporium, Pennsylvania, why wouldn’t we able to do the same tucked between the Allegheny River and Kinzua Reservoir?

So, up into New York State we had to venture; the land of ridiculous, draconian regulations, taxes and redundancy (other than that, it is a great place). In order to survive, we went in disguised as innocent anglers from Pennsylvania looking for worms. Which came naturally…Nick has to work on the innocent part. We found the worms at a pretty regular bait place and the guy had some beautiful minnows. Nick immediately fell in love with the minnows and I was enamored with the nice, plump night crawlers coming in packs of 2 dozen at a surprisingly cheap rate (not so cheap as to remind me why we have a minnow trap and shovel at home). After we told the guy we’d take some minnows and worms, he talked us into a really nice looking Styrofoam container that would keep the minnows alive for “weeks”. After all was said and done we walked out of there paying twice what I expected to in Pennsylvania but feeling like I got a deal because we picked up a piece of hollow Styrofoam that seemed as valuable as the wheel at the time. It all seemed worth it minus the paper work we had to fill out and sign. I’ve done less for mortgage loans…then again; I’m a guy who drives across state lines for bait, thus a risky character.

The excursion for fishing supplies only took three hours and seventy five miles but we were finally prepared to launch our invasion, I mean our, “dynamic kinetic operation” to limit walleye in their water space and remove those culprits that have attained fifteen inchers, or…longer. (Since naming it something else I figured we must not need a license for that…but we carried one anyway). However, the time was not right, we were early. We planned to wait to strike until dusk. During the wait we learned that when the New York bait guy was talking about the minnows, “living for weeks” in his container he must have meant, “In minnow years” which occurs at a much faster repetition than “dog years”. Our bait was turning old and grey and floating up by the hour. Down to half of our baity ammunition we decided to move up our time and line and launch our walleye kinetic aquatic operation…not raid, early.

When we got to our area of operation, I re-filled our Styrofoam bucket (yes, it leaked like cheese cloth, too) with river water to refresh our three survivors of our original, “dirty dozen”. I had packed our casualties in salt to assist in burying them at sea or a river, whatever. We decided to use the live ones first, perhaps the only wise decision I made all day but a bit late. I turned only to see that our leaky out of water container could hold water out when on water; it was floating down the river with the last of our minnows. By the time we recovered it, we had only lost one minnow (or 1/3^rd of our hardy survivors if you prefer drama) but I’m pretty sure I heard the walleye in the river sound the general alarm.

I used the tactical strategy of launching a line on a static non-kinetic action by casting out and letting bait bounce and hold on the bottom. As with most inexperienced, neophyte, non-battle hardened on the walleye shores of Pennsylvania anglers such as Nick, he was determined to stick to a “dynamic kinetic action” or continually reel in his bait. The fact that he caught walleye and a sucker between admonitions from me about this poor behavior, while I caught nothing the entire night, has nothing to do with my lack of success. I feel that next time I just need to leave my bait in longer and maybe his, “success” of actually catching fish merely disturbed the fish that were eager to hop on my hook and drove them away. Doubling down on failure is the wave of the times and a proven winner.

We did manage to get a bite from a huge fish which almost pulled our line into the river. I could feel its heavy weight on the line as I let it run some with a salted sucker (sigh, yes, after a dynamic presentation, Nick’s still wrong, though). When I set the hook, it ran and I had to let out the drag. As the line slowed and started to slack I began to reel and was picturing the huge mass of the fish I felt when I also felt it simply let go of the sucker as its head came around. When I got the bait back in, there were 3/8” gashes in the side of the minnow. That eliminated the possibility of a big channel cat and indicated a large pike or musky was the culprit. How it avoided getting the stinger hook in its jaw is a mystery. However, it is misses like that which make the night. Caught in our memory and lore is the sight of that Ugly Stick buckling over like a gymnast and the glisten of the line ripping through the river. That’s the stuff that will drive us back making our walleye incursions into crusades.

See you along the stream.