In June, 2004, Terry Nelson, owner and operator of West Prairie Resort, took time off from guiding to fish the biggest tournament ever to be hosted on Lake Oahe.  The four day walleye tournament consisted of 160 professional anglers, fishing for a grand prize of $50,000 and a fully-rigged boat and motor.      

Together on top: Partnered in the finals, pro Terry Nelson of Pierre, S.D., (left) and co-angler Marly Kroona of Blaine, Minn., take their respective titles with a finals weight of 16 pounds, 4 ounces. (Photo by Dave Scroppo)

PIERRE, S.D. — Making the most of home-water advantage and a thorough knowledge of night crawlers, local guide and resort owner Terry Nelson of Pierre came up with a big catch in the clutch, a weight of 16 pounds, 4 ounces, to surpass the trollers in the finals and take the title in the Wal-Mart RCL Walleye Tour event on Lake Oahe.

The considerable catch, with two fish over 20 inches allowed according to state regulations with two anglers in the boat, was just what Nelson needed to overcome a 1-pound, 3-ounce deficit and semifinals leader Bobby Crow. In Nelson’s bag, in fact, were a 22 1/2- and a 23-incher, along with slot fish in the 19-inch range, that earned him $50,000 cash and a fully rigged Lund boat with an Evinrude outboard.

All were part of a strategy to catch local fish that ran larger and weren’t running down the reservoir at a breakneck pace following smelt.

“Today I mad a difficult decision because I had to catch heavier fish,” Nelson says. “I had been catching migrating fish, not resident fish that are fatter.”

With that in mind, Nelson caught his biggest on a point at the mouth of the Cheyenne River, another off of a nearby underwater hump that dropped into deep water. Of the almost three dozen fish Nelson and co-angler partner Marly Kroona of Blaine, Minn., landed, the ones they decided to keep under 20 inches had to weigh at least 2 1/2 pounds.

“You’ve got to go for it all or you’re not going to get it,” Nelson says. “I had a pound and a half to make up.”

Crawler (and chub) connection

While seven of 10 finalists were trolling at least part of the time on Saturday, Nelson relied on night crawlers and creek chubs for bait to do the job on all of the tournament days. Even though the night crawler was the hot ticket Saturday, Nelson left a creek chub on one of his rods that late in the day took one of his big fish. (The bigger walleye in the qualifying rounds, though, came on creek chubs.)

To work either flavor of bait, Nelson has a time-tested method he depends on for more than 100 guide trips on Oahe per year. A bottom bouncer gets the bait down, ticking across bottom, and the rods go in holders rather than him and his partner holding them.

“Terry’s a master with live bait,” says Kroona, the co-angler winner who took home $15,000 in cash and finished third in the Angler of the Year race in his division. “He said, ‘You can hold on to the rods if you want, but I put them in the holders.’ So I put them in the holders.”

But rather than using an entire night crawler, which can result in short strikes, Nelson pins a crawler through the nose on a No. 10 Kahle hook and cuts it in half.

Another adjustment Nelson made Saturday was to move deeper than where he had been catching them. With wind knocking into a bank near the Cheyenne River and creating a shallow mudline in the semifinals, Nelson had spent most of his time in 4-6 feet of water.

Reach deep

At the other end of the spectrum was the second-place finisher, Lund pro Bobby Crow. In a pattern that gave him the lead in the semifinals and won him $25,000 for second place, Crow was trolling No. 12 clown-colored Rapala Husky Jerks on water-slicing Berkley FireLine. With 200 feet of line out, the Husky Jerks were digging in excess of 20 feet.

On Saturday, however, the walleyes dropped even deeper than the 20-30 feet Crow had been running.

“Our fish bailed out to 40 feet and laid on the bottom,” Crow says.

Fishless at 10:30 a.m., Crow relocated to another point and nabbed five fish in a half-hour.

Trolling was the order of all four days as well for seventh-place Ranger pro Bill Leonard of Estherville, Iowa. But Leonard had a few wrinkles in his presentation.

Leonard was trolling leadcore line with a 30-foot leader of 14-pound Berkley Fireline and new Berkley FS-9 Firestick crankbaits in purple. To troll in 20 feet of water, Leonard let out 100 feet of line on his counter reels, 115 to reach 30 feet. On them Leonard weighed a limit, as did nine of 10 finalists, to weigh 11 pounds, 13 ounces, the same as Crow, who claimed second behind the lead he had going into the finals.