Page 50 - ODUMar-Apr2019

Early Season

Fishing

Memories

By Bob Jensen

It’s that time of year: The boat is being
rigged, I’m putting fresh line on my reels, I’m
calling friends to see if they have any good
fishing reports, in short, I’m preparing for the
open water fishing season. As I prepare, I
have lots of memories, mostly good, about
past early season fishing adventures. My
recollection of the exact dates isn’t so good,

but my memories of the events are fairly
cloud-free. Here we go.

Clear Lake in north central Iowa doesn’t have
a closed season for walleyes anymore.
Anglers from other states like to visit Clear

Lake to chase walleyes before the season in
Our friend Jim McDonnell with an eater walleye from their home state opens. I think it was in the
a good number of years ago. Cherish the catches, but early 90’s that Clear Lake was full of smallish
more importantly, cherish the time you spend with walleyes, lots of them in the twelve to
family and friends. fourteen-inch range. They weren’t big, but
they were plentiful and fun to catch. I hosted
an annual gathering for friends in the media to get together on Clear Lake on a Saturday in mid-April.
We usually had three boats with three anglers in each. We always caught fish, and we always had a

good time. One-year Jim McDonnell, Marty Papke, and Rick James shared a boat. Mac was a fishing
guide and school teacher who lived in the Iowa Great Lakes area of northwest Iowa. Mac isn’t with us
anymore.

Rick was one of the pioneers in the fishing education industry. He hosted an outdoor radio show and
wrote fishing articles. He lived in Willmar Minnesota.

Marty lived in northern Wisconsin at the time. He guided and wrote fishing articles. Marty now lives in
Michigan. All during the day, you could hear these guys laughing and landing fish. They were having a
good time, and that’s what fishing is supposed to be about. At the end of the day we compared notes
regarding how we caught the fish and how many we caught. We all had a lot, but they said they had
caught 137 walleyes, and we believed them. Rick returned home and wrote an article about the
trip. In the article, he reported catching “about 40” walleyes. I called him right away, this was before