SOUTH DAKOTA'S WALLEYE FISHING DESERVES ITS REPUTATION
Video: The Eyes of Oahe
In this special video feature, watch Wild Bill Schneider and videographer Gene Colling's adventures on South Dakota's Oahe Reservoir, a place Bill calls "a dream-come-true for walleye fanatics."By Bill Schneider, 8-06-08
Click on the image above to watch Gene Colling’s video of the day on the Oahe. Below: Another “eye” hits the net. Photo by Bill Schneider. Bottom: Wild Bill with the biggest fish of the day. Photo by Gene Colling.
If you like to fish for walleyes--often called “eyes” because they need such big ones to gather as much light as possible down at the bottom of the lake where they almost always dwell--you’re probably like me and dream about fishing South Dakota’s Oahe Reservoir.
I finally had my chance this summer, and now, I’m already trying to figure out how to get back there for more.
Oahe is one of South Dakota’s Great Lakes, highly acclaimed as one of the best walleye fisheries in the world. And it’s massive, to say the least, stretching from South Dakota’s capital city, Pierre, for 231 miles way up into North Dakota, creating an astounding 2,250 miles of shoreline--perhaps even more this year with near-record snowpack melting upstream in my home turf, the mother state of Montana, and flowing downstream to fill up Oahe and all the other Missouri River reservoirs to levels not seen in many years.
That makes Oahe the fourth largest reservoir in the country, and with steadily improving fisheries management, the walleye fishing has gotten better year after year and now, it’s considered the best ever. Oahe is a dream-come-true for walleye fanatics.
Before getting to the fishing, though, my true confession. On that particular day, I was supposed to be at the annual conference of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA), sitting in a conference room in Bismarck’s Ramkota Inn listening to experts tell me how to be a better outdoor writer. But thanks to Buddy Siener of the South Dakota Office of Tourism, I had a chance to go walleye fishing on Oahe, so I had to decide if I wanted to skip classes.
To be honest, it took me at least one-fourth of a nanosecond to make that decision. At 4 am the next morning I was in my pickup truck with fellow outdoor writer Gene Colling driving south to Mobridge, South Dakota, the “Bridge City” of about 3,600 residents (mostly anglers, I suspect), to meet Jim Keller, fishing guide and owner of Lakeside Cabins, for breakfast at the Grand Oasis Café to be followed by a day of catching the Eyes of Oahe.
I figured learning how to right could wait, write?
After breakfast with Jim and his friend Dan Figuracion, we headed out for the boat ramp. Dan had a neck brace and limited use of his right arm from an accident, but his doctor had told him fishing was good physical therapy and he should do as much of it as possible.
Both Gene and I promptly asked for his doctor’s phone number.
Once out on the water with the Mini-Kota moving us slowly around over large schools of fish, Jim had us fish with jigs and plastic curly tails tipped with a little nightcrawler, either jigging straight down or casting out with a slow, jerky retrieve. And it worked, of course, like he knew it would. We quickly started netting fish, not every cast and no trophies that day, but steady action all day, topped out with my 24-incher, the biggest of the day.
That fish is called an “over” on Oahe, where regulations limit anglers to four fish with only one of them over 20 inches--and no high grading, which means once you put the fish in the live well, you can’t replace it with a bigger fish. Research has shown that a high percentage of fish put in a live well and later released eventually die.
Anybody who knows about walleyes knows their reputation as table fare. They’re commonly considered the best-tasting freshwater fish, so it was almost a shock for Jim when we told him we couldn’t keep any fish.
We had to head back to Bismarck for the rest of the OWAA conference with no place to cook or store fish. Even though I felt the pain in my stomach, we didn’t use the live well and released all of our fish, including the non-walleyes.
One of the special attractions of fishing Oahe, incidentally, is the incredible diversity of the fishery. You never know what’s on your line until you get the fish up to the boat. Between walleyes, we caught a few northern pike, yellow perch, sauger, white bass, smallmouth bass, and freshwater drum. And we missed other species often caught while targeting walleye in Oahe such as channel catfish, Chinook salmon. largemouth bass, crappie, burbot, and others.
While driving back to Bismarck after that great day on the lake, we spend most of the trip plotting out ways to get back for more of the Eyes of Oahe, which I’m sure we will. If you get your chance, don’t pass it up.
Footnote: For more walleye fishing, check out the coverage of the Governor’s Cup Walleye Tournament on Fort Peck, another walleye-filled reservoir upstream on the Missouri River from Oahe.
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