Cory Larocque and John Desaulniers held off all competitors last weekend to emerge as the champions of the 2025 Rainy River Walleye Tournament.
Larocque and Desaulniers weighed in at top spot on day one with 12.47 lbs., and after an up and down day two they landed 6.85 lbs to knock off day one’s second place finishers and retain top spot. Second-place team of Danny Usiskie and Bill Haskell had brought in a 7.25 lb. big fish ahead of them for a total bag of 8.42 lbs.
“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Larocque said.
“All we wanted to do is get our four fish this morning, and we managed to do that by 9 a.m. and just upsize throughout the day but it was an on-off fight all day long. It wasn’t until late in the day that we actually threw one of our small kickers away to upsize. We got an 18 incher at around 2:30 p.m. so that kind of helped us a lot.”
It was Desaulniers who brought in the big fish for day two, a fight he said was worth the effort.
“It wasn’t as hard as the sturgeon we caught,” he said.
“It was fun, I knew it was a good one as soon as I hooked it.”
A big fish over 8 lbs. keyed them to the lead, but that wasn’t in the boat until near the end of the day.
“Yesterday was another tough battle, we didn’t get the big one until 4 p.m. yesterday, and another kicker shortly after that,” Larocque said.
Their big fish on day one was the biggest in the field on the day at 8.34 lbs., which made it good enough for a $500 bonus on top of the $15,000 top prize payout.
Past champs Doug McBride and Steve Ballan looked like they might have a good shot with a 9.11 lb bag, but were unseated by Usiski and Haskell.
After fishing together for a number of years, this was the pair’s first time in the top five with a chance to drive through the big tent.
The top 10 total bags for the tournament were:
- Cory Larocque and John Desaulniers 20.83 lbs.
- Danny Usiski and Bill Haskell 19.31 lbs.
- Doug McBride and Steve Ballan 18.98 lbs.
- Shane and Scott Aikenhead 18.81 lbs.
- Brandon Ignaszewski and Mike Vacura 18.68 lbs.
- Brett Schram and Ryan Redford 17.92 lbs.
- Russel Platz and Ben Duick 17.73 lbs.
- Allan Wolanicki and Parker Wolanicki Forster 17.39 lbs.
- Cory Ney and Bryan Baron 16.84 lbs.
- Braydon Kreger and Katie Hay 16.54 lbs.
