The first ever Midwest Walleye Challenge for South Dakota is officially in the books! This was the first year South Dakota participated in this event, which began on April 1 and ran through June 29.
“I had a blast participating in this event,” said Nick Harrington, Owner of Lip Ripper Fishing. “The MyCatch app was a great tool for me both in terms of keeping track of the size/quality of fish I’ve caught and where I caught them.”
Through the event participants could submit any and all walleyes caught throughout the state during the specified time period. This was then broken down into two categories: Longest Fish and Most Fish, which maintained a live leaderboard throughout the course of the event.
“This event gave me a much better understanding of the fish I was catching, and got me excited about fish I normally wouldn’t have been excited about,” continued Harrington. “It was really cool to be part of submitting this data on our fisheries.”
All of this data will then be compiled and analyzed by South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks (GFP) fisheries managers, which will look at recruitment, year-class structure, and angling pressure among other variables. This will then go back towards making fisheries management decisions.
Learn More: Midwest Walleye Challenge to Provide Walleye Data for Biologists
“It’s pretty cool for me to be able to say I played a role in sampling Lake Francis Case, Lake Sharpe, and Lake Oahe,” elaborated Harrington. “These are three prestigious fisheries, and they all had different population dynamics that were cool to pay attention to.”
Complete information regarding this event, final results, and interpretation of the data will be available in the coming weeks!
Unofficial Results, Longest Walleye:
- Craig Case 29.3 inches
- Stephen Hettick 29 inches
- Herbert Leuthe 28 inches
- Silas Simonson 27.2 inches
- Tom Wanttie 27 inches
- Hunter Halverson 26.5 inches
- Brock Bahr 26.3 inches
- Quinn Simonson 26.3 inches
- Jake Case 26 inches
- Andrew McDonald 25.2 inches
Unofficial Results: Most Walleye:
- Michael Ocobock 443 fish
- Jeremy Heideman 351 fish
- Nick Harrington 321 fish
- Hank Asher 126 fish
- Brian Blackwell 82 fish
- Herbert Leuthe 65 fish
- Seth Malsom 53 fish
- Jesse Curnow 52 fish
- Riley Sprouse 46 fish
- Tom Wanttie 45 fish
