Show: Montana Monster Walleyes

Destination: Fort Peck Reservoir, Montana

Anglers: Gary Parsons, Pete Maina, Ken Schmidt and Todd Riggs

Season: Summer (late July)

Lodging:
Cottonwood Inn & Suites
Glasgow, MT
ph: 406-228-8213
web: www.cottonwoodinn.net

Over the years I have been asked many times where my favorite place to fish for walleyes is. I’ve fished a lot of great walleye waters, but one always stands out – Fort Peck Reservoir in NE Montana. Not only is the walleye fishing great, but the rugged and wide-open landscape is beautiful and full of wildlife; and on top of all that, the lake gets relatively little fishing pressure most of the year … it’s a true Sportsman’s Paradise! Our base of operation for this fabulous fishing adventure is in the nearby town of Glasgow, Montana where the fine folks at the Cottonwood Inn know how to treat their guests.

As for the walleye fishing, Fort Peck offers up some real brutes, and at times, lots of them! While getting on this kind of a bite most anywhere else would mean targeting the cool-water periods of Spring and Fall, Fort Peck offers tremendous fishing for big walleyes all summer long. That’s when we headed out there … mid-summer, to hook up with a couple local anglers, Ken Schmidt and Todd Riggs, who have had their finger on the pulse of this fishery for the past few years now. These guys have ruled the local tournament scene for some time, and were gracious enough to share the boat with us on this trip. All my stories of "Big Sky Country" walleyes even got the attention of the Musky Maniac, Pete Maina, who begged to come along on this one … and man was he glad he did!

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Pattern

For the most part, Fort Peck fishes much like it’s relative Missouri River reservoirs across the Dakotas, with summer being a good time for spinners and/or live bait presentations. Walleye location is pretty standard as well with main-lake points being a top choice, followed closely by major main-lake flats. That by no means is to say that finding the fish on this system is easy. When it comes to points, like the other Mo River reservoirs, Fort Peck has literally hundreds of them! It’s a game of hunting … hunting and searching to find the right points that are actually holding good sized fish.

Normally when you find the walleyes on these types of lakes, their location will help you determine the best presentation to target them. If you begin marking fish scattered on flats, then trolling spinners or possibly crankbaits can be your best option. But if your searching has you marking fish holding on the main-lake points, as was the case with us on this trip, you’re usually better off taking a slightly slower approach. Ken and Todd had told us they had been having great success with bottom bouncers and leeches in these situations. After seeing first hand how effective their presentation was, I decided to try the similar presentation of "Slow Death". Those already familiar with the Slow Death technique know that the uniquely bent Slow Death Hook is best dressed with about a half a night crawler to give it the best action. However, after some experimenting I found these Montana walleyes like more meat on their table, and had better success using whole crawlers for this tactic, as long as the crawlers weren’t too long. The added meat on the hook did slow down the "roll’ action of the presentation compared to using the smaller offering, but because of the size of the fish it also proved to be deadly on these monster Ft. Peck fish.

Most walleye anglers will tell you that the mid-summer bite can be a tough deal with few bites and big fish a rarity. That may be true in places like Wisconsin or Minnesota, but out here, this mid-summer bite was hot! We caught numbers of gorgeous walleyes in the 3 to 7 pound range – including a few "Double Headers", and even managed a couple real trophies that were over 10 pounds.