Lucas Punkari
Although he had won the Emo Walleye Classic in its first year of existence in 2002 with Harvey Cochrane, it had been a decade since Morson’s Oliver Gibbins had tried to win a second crown after finishing in 29th place back in 2003.
However, when long-time contender Les Morrison asked Gibbins to team up with him for the 2013 edition of the tournament, the four-time Rainy River Walleye Tournament champion jumped at the chance.
“I’m really glad that he asked me,” Gibbins smiled.
“I wasn’t busy this weekend, so I actually had a clear schedule for once,” he noted.
The first-year pairing proved to be a successful one as they reeled in 20.16 pounds to take home this year’s title Saturday afternoon at the Emo/La Vallee Community Centre.
Their triumph not only marked the second time that Gibbins had hoisted the EWC trophy, but it also the first event title for Morrison, who previously had finished in second place with John Swentik in 2008.
“It feels absolutely great to finally win it,” the Baudette, Mn. native enthused.
“There are a lot of good fishermen that are out here, and it’s really nice to finally come out on top for once,” he remarked.
Heading into the two-day tournament, the pair had struggled in their pre-fishing as they only were able to head out onto the Rainy River the day prior to the actual competition.
“Thursday was no good for us at all,” Gibbins admitted.
“We caught one six-inch walleye and that was it for the entire day,” noted Morrison.
Those difficulties soon were forgotten, however, as the pair brought four fish to the stage Friday afternoon that tipped the scales at 8.35 pounds, which put them in fourth place in the standings heading into Day 2.
“We went as far east as you can go to start off, but I had this feeling about this one spot before the dam and it paid off for us,” Morrison said.
“We were quite happy with our final total weight for the day, especially after what had happened to us the day before,” he added.
On Day 2, the pair made their way east once again, but soon discovered they would have to switch up their strategy if they wanted to be among the top teams at the end.
“We went back to the same some spot that we had caught our fish the day before, but it was pretty slow and we only caught one good one,” Gibbins revealed.
“So we made a run out west after that, and we ended up catching our fish about 15-16 miles from the launch site in Emo.
“We caught our two big ones in that spot around 2 p.m. or so, and they came back to back in about a 15- to 20-minute span,” he added.
One of those two big fish tipped the scales at 6.29 pounds, which was the kicker to a 11.81-pound bag that allowed them to overtake then-leaders Terry Wilson and James Lambert.
From there, Gibbins and Morrison looked on as the teams of Grant Swire and Leroy Wilson, Irwin Hughes and Amber Hughes, and Day 1 leaders Bryan Bonot and Norm Hyatt all were unable to overtake them.
“We thought it was going to be really close, and we were both shaking up there a little bit as we were both a little nervous,” Gibbins admitted.
“I was really surprised when Amber and Irwin weren’t able to overtake us as their fish looked bigger than what they actually weighed in at,” Morrison noted.
“But once we saw that Bryan and Norm had only caught three fish, we knew that we had it then,” he added.
The Hughes were the closest challenger to the eventual champs. The father-daughter duo claimed runner-up honours with a two-day weight of 18.63 pounds but their four-fish catch of 7.37 pounds Saturday was not enough to vault them into first place.
“We probably caught about the same amount of fish today than we did yesterday [Friday],” noted Irwin Hughes, who lives in Devlin.
“But once we heard that they [Gibbins and Morrison] had a total weight of 20 pounds, we knew that we didn’t have enough.”
“But we are still really happy with how we did as this is the best that we have ever done in this tournament,” stressed Amber Hughes, who now lives in Calgary.
Having fished together in the EWC on 11 occasions, with their previous career best finish being 18th place back in 2008, the Hughes used their experience to their advantage Friday—finishing the day in
second place with 11.26 pounds.
The key fish in their catch Friday was a 7.97-pound lunker that Amber reeled in around lunch time, which proved to be the largest walleye that was caught all weekend.
“Once we caught that fish, we just sat there and stared at it for about 10 seconds,” she recalled.
“Then once we realized that it was a walleye, there was a lot of ‘get it in the livewell,’ followed by a lot of screaming and cheering,” she added.
Rounding out the podium was the team of Wilson and Lambert, whose two-day weight of 18.15 pounds gave the third-year tandem their highest finish together in the EWC.
“We caught a lot of fish so we were pretty happy about that,” said Wilson, who had a previous best finish of 11th place in 2008 with Keith Wilson.
“We did the exact same thing on Saturday that we did on Friday, and our pattern stayed the exact same as it had been on the day before,” he noted.
“We really didn’t need to change anything.”
Ed Carlson and Jason McQuaker finished in fourth place with a weight of 17.80 pounds, followed by Swire and Wilson in fifth with a two-day total of 16.35.
As for Bonot and Hyatt, who led the tournament after Day 1 with a four-fish total of 13.47 pounds, they ended up finishing in sixth place overall with 15.83 pounds after only catching three fish Saturday.
“We had a really good day yesterday [Friday], but we didn’t have a good day today and the fish just didn’t bite for us,” Hyatt lamented after he and Bonot earned their best finish in 11 tournaments together.
“Apparently, where we fishing had a real good bite in the morning today,” he noted.
“But by the time that we got there, it were pretty much done.”
Rounding out the top 10 were Frank Grunewald and Frank McWhinnie (14.07 pounds), Cody Drennan and Clint Brown (12.78), Dale Hartlin and Dan Pollard (12.03), and Rick and Al Socholotuk (11.92).
Defending champs Paul Allan and Jason Rostek came home in 14th place with a two-day total of 8.02 pounds.
