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I'm Brian Bashore, Professional walleye angler and owner of The Walleye Guys Guide service. I am here to reel you in with captivating stories, expert tips, and interviews with some of the biggest names in the fishing community. So, sit back, relax, and let the drag scream!
Hey folks, thanks for tuning into this episode of real talk fishing with no limits. Uh, this episode bringing to you out of pier, South Dakota national wall, like tour pro Justin, Seiverding things. Let's just wet a line and talk, jump right in to see what's up with Justin. Hey man, how's it going?
Justin Sieverding (00:16.815)
Hehehe
Justin Sieverding (00:36.675)
It's going well, Brian, how about yourself?
Brian Bashore (00:39.082)
I am fabulous, I just got home from Lake of the Woods yesterday on what appears to be the last ice fishing expedition of the year, so...
Justin Sieverding (00:46.927)
We were gonna go up north. We're actually gonna go to Devil's Lake this weekend. It's like Not even gonna go up there. I mean, I like ice fishing the older I get the less excited I am to be out in the cold and So it's like it gets real tough And then when you hear that like snow bears are going through ice in February on Devil's Lake It's like nah, I don't think so. I think I'll probably just wait and wait till I mean the rivers open here in Pierce. So
Brian Bashore (00:59.815)
Agree.
Justin Sieverding (01:15.195)
You know, I just wait till it's 50 degrees next week and put the boat in the water.
Brian Bashore (01:18.762)
Yeah, I was just going to say, I think you got the rivers pretty, I don't know how far down is it open in period there.
Justin Sieverding (01:24.583)
I don't know how far down it's open, but like on, I think it was Monday, it was like 53, I think even beyond that. So I think like you get to like Antelope Creek, I think is probably where it's at. Cause I know, I can never, Macarabies Hole or whatever it is down there by below Farm Island, they were just pounding the fish down there on Monday. There were like 50 boats out. So I was not one of them cause that's like the limit to where I actually want to go out and catch it.
Brian Bashore (01:27.394)
Farm Island.
Really? Oh.
Brian Bashore (01:46.262)
really.
Justin Sieverding (01:52.04)
walleye if the winds blowing and it's 48 degrees out so
Brian Bashore (01:52.106)
Right?
Brian Bashore (01:56.266)
Yeah, that's no, I've been there. I remember MWC out of peer there, man, 2000 and a long time ago, tan or something like that, uh, is first weekend in April and you couldn't go past farm Island because there was, I think that was about the limit because then there was still ice.
Justin Sieverding (02:07.628)
Oh, yeah. Yup.
Justin Sieverding (02:14.971)
Denedit launched out of Downs Marina right there by the hospital and like the week before it's like Don't even know if the tournament can happen because the like the causeway still had ice on it Yeah
Brian Bashore (02:26.858)
Yeah, it was great. I mean, we got a 30 incher of practice. I think there was the skippers brothers caught one in the tournament. There was three thirties caught during the tournament, but yeah, most of the fits are up in the base and then that's where it was one out of.
Justin Sieverding (02:38.991)
Yeah, oh, absolutely. And Lake Sharks is just so crazy this time of year because, I mean, all the fish, yeah, they're up in town between Pier and Fort Pier and it gets so much pressure this time of year, you know, with guys that just want to get out fishing on the weekends. And then, you know, as soon as everything thaws out, they all go down to West Bend and, you know, just thousands of fish a day come out of that fishery every single day. And every year I say,
Brian Bashore (03:03.177)
Yes, there is.
Justin Sieverding (03:06.227)
Well, that's the last year that Lake Sharp's gonna be good. Like there's gonna be no fish left. And then the next year it's just as good. So I don't know how this fishery keeps putting fish out the way it does, but it's just crazy. Like, like literally like about 50 feet that way is the river behind my house. And like you can go back and cast at night, you know, when they're back spawning. And it's like there's nice fish to be had.
And they're so vulnerable, you think they're going to get fished out. But just like sharp just keeps putting them out year after year. So thank goodness for that, I guess. Keep.
Brian Bashore (03:39.798)
Yeah, the whole Missouri river system is just phenomenal. I mean, most of it's just natural reproduction. I mean, there's very little stocking that goes on there. I know we have some that Lewis and Clark, but that's a little different beast as far as the river goes. A lot smaller, a lot more current. So it's tough to keep some of those fish in, uh, in Francis case. I mean, the numbers are just phenomenal. I mean, it's huge. What, how long is Lake Sharp? So people don't know you have Lewis and Clark, which is the Gavin's point dam, then he go up and then you hit Fort Randall, Fort Randall to Fort Thompson.
Justin Sieverding (03:43.247)
Yeah. Yup.
Brian Bashore (04:08.874)
Which is 107 miles long. I believe that's Lake Francis case for Thompson, right? To big Ben, which is the damn then how far is, how long is like sharp.
Justin Sieverding (04:14.607)
Yep, Fort Thompson and the Big Ben. Yep.
Justin Sieverding (04:22.255)
I bet it's about, well, I don't know, with all the twists and turns, I was gonna say like 60 some miles up there. Yeah. No, not at all. I mean, it's just a, like a, oh yeah, it's just a throughput on the Missouri River. Like there's no storage there. You know, like the elevation goes up like two foot, down two foot, so they're like four foot of fluctuation, depending on how hard they're running the dam, but there's no actual storage on the shark, so.
Brian Bashore (04:23.989)
60, 70.
Right. It's not, I mean, near as big as a wire, Francis Case, but it's phenomenal fishery though.
Justin Sieverding (04:50.731)
Yeah, it's pretty tiny. I mean, it's a lot like Lewis and Clark, you know, in that sense. There's just nothing, they get up to Lake Oahe and that thing's like 211 miles long. So, but.
Brian Bashore (05:00.266)
Yeah, yeah, you have, and 200 feet deep, almost in spots. So, Luc Clark maybe has some 50 foot holes, but most of it's 20, 30 foot, and all the fishing's done at two to eight foot all summer. Where Sharp, yeah, West Bend is, if you have people haven't heard about it, it's lower, I guess we'd call that the lower end of Lake Sharp, and it's just small mouth and wall. I just loaded all summer long. There's some trees down there.
Justin Sieverding (05:02.843)
Yeah, yup, yup.
Justin Sieverding (05:09.32)
Yeah. Yup.
Justin Sieverding (05:21.467)
Yep. It's unbelievable. It keeps a lot of guides in business. Uh, I mean, they're just in their poll and fish out left and right. It's in, I like it. We're talking two minutes ago. I don't know how it continues to put the fish out. It does, but thank goodness it does. It's an unbelievable fishery.
Brian Bashore (05:29.141)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Bashore (05:42.682)
I love about when you got ice out on Lake Sharp is this clean. That water is crystal clear. I mean, I remember going up there for that MWC years ago and I was, it was like, I could see 10 to, I could see walleye 10 feet deep, you know, near the bridge. And then, um, they up where the bad river meets it, you know, I saw what I'm like, Hey, there's one swimming around over there. I realized it was on my dead stick that was hanging out the back of the boat, jigging Mendo way out there and it's hooked. I could see it 50 feet away to swimming around like that was a, it's a pretty cool little place. So.
Justin Sieverding (05:47.147)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (06:02.149)
Yeah. Yup.
Justin Sieverding (06:11.853)
It definitely is, yep.
Brian Bashore (06:13.458)
And I think, like you said, we got, you know, after next week and we're hitting 50 degrees and above freezing a night. So long as they get the boat docks, start putting some boat docks in. I know they've already been fishing out of Fort Thompson up near around Chamberlain. It sounds like it's open. Water's open down to Chamberlain. There just isn't any docks. So you got to put in fast water or dock, you know, beach in it and getting muddy getting in, so I've had a lot of clients call, want to know when we're ready to go. And I'm thinking March 1st. This guy is going to be.
Justin Sieverding (06:42.267)
Yeah, I was gonna say, you're gonna be, you're gonna be busy. Like it's.
Brian Bashore (06:43.392)
All in on the guide.
Yeah, which is perfectly fine. So I am ready. This little bit of ice fishing, and it's just time to accept that. That's over. Get the boat ready.
Justin Sieverding (06:51.877)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (06:57.171)
It was a wild year for weather. I mean, like, you know, for two weeks is like 20 below zero every single day. Other than that, it's been 50 degrees. So it's.
Brian Bashore (07:04.834)
Right, I mean you were in the boat over Christmas still. But that's why we live on the river because we get more fish in the most and we don't have seasons here so we don't close down, thankfully.
Justin Sieverding (07:08.4)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (07:15.528)
100% effect. Yep.
Brian Bashore (07:17.906)
It's some of the good things about South Dakota. There's many of them, but that's my favorite is we don't have seasons. We can close nothing down. And the river, river is just a target rich environment, habitats, great hunting. It's great fishing. I mean, every it's an outdoorsman paradise out or, you know, and you live right on the river. So, I mean, you got muleys coming up in the backyard, tearing up your garden and trees, I imagine.
Justin Sieverding (07:32.755)
Sports wins paradise. Yep, yep.
Justin Sieverding (07:40.955)
Those things drive me nuts. Like, this is, I wish I were taking a picture of this. This is like two weeks ago, I come home and it was right in the middle of the day. I went and got some lunch and I came back and there were two mule deers, like laying on the concrete, like right in front of our house, like right next to the front door, you know, just cause it was warm, right? And like you pull into the driveway and they just look at you like, hey, what are you doing here, bud? You know, it's like, well, I want to go into my house, you know, so.
Brian Bashore (08:02.574)
See ya.
Justin Sieverding (08:09.831)
But yeah, they're back eating whatever they can find this time of year. And it's they drive me nuts because they eat the grass, you know, right down to the rut and like I'm very anal retentive about my yard. Like I like my yard to look like Augusta National and I'll look back there and there'll be like a bed from where they slept all night and crapped all over the place and then just ate everything around there. And I'm like, get out of here, guys. But also it's pretty cool to see them. So I don't get real mad at them.
Brian Bashore (08:17.154)
Alright.
Brian Bashore (08:23.746)
Yeah, I hear ya.
Brian Bashore (08:28.782)
There you go.
Brian Bashore (08:37.25)
All right. I got two short hairs that turn into goats all summer as well. And to tear it up the backyard. I'm like, why do they want to eat the grass? I don't know if there's grubs out there and then they start. It's just, I've got kind of given up. It just is what it is.
Justin Sieverding (08:43.092)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (08:49.723)
Yeah, I sometimes when they're around, I just, I just turned my head because there's they're not even scared of the dogs in the neighborhood. You know, it's just dog runs up to them. They just look at him like, Hey, what are you going to do to me? So good. Yeah. Good for them.
Brian Bashore (08:57.323)
No.
Brian Bashore (09:00.786)
Right. I'm a lot bigger than you. I can kick a couple of years ago, went to cascade, uh, like cascade up there in Idaho and as we're driving to the lake, there's this little house and I'm like, there's just mule deer all over just walking around town and it's a small house, he's got hay bales around it. I mean, it's old, right? So it's poor insulated, but literally the mule deer were laying around the edge all the way around this house, getting the heat, you know, from the house. And.
Justin Sieverding (09:27.6)
Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (09:28.838)
And this guy's got feeders sitting on his front yard, right? Like little cut, still cattle feeders, three or four of them like, well, wonder here. And then the next day, right at like four o'clock just heard just coming out of the kind of the mountain hillside, whatever. I'm like, man, they're going to that guy's house. So the next day we stopped by a box of crackers and pulled into the church parking lot right next to it. And they just came over and literally fed them out of your hands. So guys stuck one in his mouth and immediately just took it out of his mouth. Bucks, I mean, full antlers.
Justin Sieverding (09:56.302)
Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (09:56.974)
I mean like 40 of them just surrounded you. You could pet them and I got videos of it all over and you're just kind of petting them on the head and like these are a hundred percent wild deer. And they were just all over the town, roamed around like whatever. I mean, y'all were y'all feeding us. We're coming in to eat. We don't really care. And we're going to insulate your house. Eight, your house is keeping us warm. So we're good to go. There's a ton of snow, but it's, you know, mountain towns where it's sunny. It's nice. It was like 40 degrees and sunny every day there, but a lot of snow. It was, it was pretty cool.
Justin Sieverding (10:25.691)
And they don't have to worry about lead poisoning or arrow poisoning. So that's a pretty big deal for them too. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (10:29.198)
Right there. It's a pretty safe place. Pretty safe place unless you were a perch. It was a definitely safe unless you were a perch. Nonetheless, Jess and for those listening in today that don't know who Jess and Sabre Dean is, I mean, come on people get with it. If you don't know the guy, but you, you've been fishing the tour for four years now or something. I mean, all of them four times, but you are like a serial entrepreneur.
Justin Sieverding (10:48.315)
Yeah, come on, cheepers!
Justin Sieverding (10:53.339)
Yeah, full time for four years now, yeah, yep.
Brian Bashore (10:58.638)
You've been around in this outdoor industry for a long time, doing a lot of different things. Uh, let's tell the people kind of what you've dabbed in and what you're dabbing in now.
Justin Sieverding (11:08.179)
Yeah, so, you know, just back to the kind of entrepreneurial stuff like, we've had a couple different outdoor companies like DOA decoy company, you know, back in the day before Rhino bought them out there out of Maple Lake, they own like beaver tail products, you know, and that company is still doing incredibly well. We had Dakota Lure Company, which became part of Phantom Lures. And you know,
I honestly haven't been around Phantom for quite some time, so I don't know what they all have going on. But just recently, yeah, I don't know what exactly happened. Just during that COVID time, things just went a little wild and I don't know what all went on there. But now the newest thing like Todd Emeril and Greg Stralow and I, we started Walleye X. It's a...
Brian Bashore (11:42.806)
Nothing I believe I think they sold a couple of years ago, right. Or are they?
Brian Bashore (11:50.283)
Right.
Justin Sieverding (12:05.687)
a new crankbait company. We have some pretty cool products. We launched that last year. And so, yeah, just giving it a go with some really pretty neat bait designs. Like as far as hard baits go, like that's our main entry right now are hard baits, between the glide baits and then build crank baits. And like we have a saber lip, it has really cool radius to it and gives a really neat action to the bait.
And then like the kamikaze, which is our version of a glide bait. And, you know, it's all made out of one piece, so it's impact resistant and, you know, oversized hooks and all that kind of stuff. So basically incorporating stuff that, you know, we as fishermen want in a product. And then since it's ours, we can do whatever we want. So, um, you know, like I said, we're, I think it was like June of last year is when the website and everything went up and, uh, you know, we're just plugging away on that thing. So, um, yeah, it's, it's pretty exciting in that sense.
Brian Bashore (13:02.29)
Usually when lures are made by fishermen for fishermen, those are, they tend to be the best, right? Like the oversized hooks. You know what? Glad Bates don't come with the right size hooks that we all have to take off and put the right size hook on.
Justin Sieverding (13:09.719)
Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I mean, I, everyone loves a jick, a rap with jigging rap. And it's like, I wish that instead of those little tiny V-ment hooks, I wish they were like two odd hooks on the back of that thing. And, uh, and the fins didn't fall off all the time. So, you know, then it's like, it's like, okay, well now I have the opportunity to design my own. So that's what we did. We made so the fin can't come up because it's, you know, ABS plastic molded around a chunk of lead with a two watt hook in the back on both the
Brian Bashore (13:24.92)
Yes.
Justin Sieverding (13:39.155)
three quarter ounce and one ounce with a big hook on the bottom and you know it's pretty much well indestructible and has hooks that once you get hooked up that fish really isn't going anywhere so
Brian Bashore (13:50.894)
Yeah, cause a lot of people, I personally don't lose a lot of fish on jig and wraps. I don't know if it's cause I'm running a fluorocarbon leader and always running on cigar Smackdown braid. I know like Linder, many swear by using mono with it. I think I can get that different, that give by using the certain action of rod. I'm a St. Croix guy. They make jig and wrap rods, which are awesome. I thank you guys. Your products are in a St. Croix store and you did some partnership stuff with them, right?
Justin Sieverding (14:14.383)
Yeah, so we, yup, absolutely. So like I, I've ran St. Croix rods forever. I think the, well, all three of us, we, we run, uh, Greg, Todd and I, we all run St. Croix stuff, love it. Um, but you know, to your point on glide baits, like, you know, just being able to change the action, whether it's through the action of the rod, like, you know, the St. Croix rod or, um, like I, the front deck of my boat, I'll have rods that are just tied with monofilament straight to the glide bait.
with fluorocarbon straight to the glide bait and then do, you know, a braid and then like one arm width of mono to the glide bait just so you can affect the action that much more. Cause like obviously mono has a lot of stretch. So you can really rip on it, but the bait isn't affected that much. Fluorocarbon has just a little bit of give to it. So it's a little bit different action, but it sinks, right? Like fluorocarbon sinks. So it changes the darting action of the bait.
And then obviously braid like you're just right on that bait. So, you know, if you really want to like get after it, then, you know, that's a really good thing. And, you know, especially like I know we'll probably get into this more. Maybe this is our entrance into that forward facing sonar melee that we're facing in today's world of walleye fishing and just fishing in general. That's, you know, it's an amazing technology. But for me, you know, just sitting down and being able to watch these fish, you know, in real time.
Brian Bashore (15:15.758)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (15:28.049)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (15:41.223)
And if we're casting to them, whether it's a glide bait or we're casting paddle tails or split tails, soft plastics at them and being able to watch and then change our cadence or what line we're using, what action of rod, in real time to get those strikes, it's just invaluable. It's completely changing the way I think about fish. And sometimes, and that's just in my nature, I'm a very analytical person. It almost works against me because it's like I...
I will sit there and try to get that one fish to bite for 45 minutes, right? Where I should have been to the next pot of fish 45 minutes ago, but no, it's like, I'm going to get that one guy to bite. And then it's like, oh, it's 2 30 in the afternoon. I have to be in a half hour and I have two fish in the box because I just spent all day trying to catch this one fish. So but yeah, I mean, it's you know, glide baits or anything like being able to choose the right rod and the right line combo and the right cadence.
Brian Bashore (16:16.034)
for way too long. You should.
Justin Sieverding (16:39.859)
for the conditions that you have that day is so important. And forward-facing sonar just makes that selection process that much easier.
Brian Bashore (16:48.062)
It does. And that's the good and bad with forward facing and as you're going to do just that now it becomes a whole nother game. I want to get that one fish. I can see that I can't get next thing you do two hours later and you're still chasing them around in the reality is he's just isn't hungry. He's not going to, not going to bite. Right. That's a reaction bite bait anyway. You know, and we're like, wow, I, I just screwed up because time, because time flies, right? Cause you're playing a video game in a sense.
Justin Sieverding (16:55.503)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (16:59.679)
Yeah
Justin Sieverding (17:04.464)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (17:10.251)
Oh, absolutely. Even, even like when we were at Francis case last year and, uh, you know, we're out in the trees and I got a whole bunch of leeches. And I thought I'm just going to put just a little tiny hook on, you know, right through the sucker of the leech and a split shot, you know, a Bob props rig and just put that down in the trees. And like those walleyes, you're just going to swallow that thing. And I'm just going to be off to the races and
I literally sat there for an hour with one fish that was like it. And I'm guessing it was a walleye, but it could not been a walleye. But I was just trying to feed this walleye that leech. And it's like, it has to literally be sitting on his lips. Like all he has to do is just open his mouth and, you know, I'm going to have eight pounds in the boat just with this one fish and it just wouldn't happen. And like, for me, that was kind of the downfall of my 2023 season is I'm, I'm like way overthinking trying to make these.
Brian Bashore (17:54.19)
I'm going to go to bed.
Justin Sieverding (18:07.655)
fish bite instead of just going out and going fishing. So, you know, there'll be a little change of plan for the 2024 season in that sense to not really rely or think that I'm so good that I'm going to make these fish come get in the boat. So yeah, yeah.
Brian Bashore (18:20.114)
Right. Keep it simple, especially rivers. It's a, what do you think about forward facing on rivers and how it works? I mean, clearly I think there seems to be a different strategy with it there.
Justin Sieverding (18:29.827)
So I've actually.
Yeah. So like, obviously just living in Fort Peeran, we have access to Lake Sharp. Uh, like I'm a, I'm a Lowrance guy, so active target and out active target too. You put it on scout mode where you take like that aerial photo of the bottom. In the springtime, it's like invaluable because you can literally put that down and troll along the shoreline and you can see where the pot of fish is, you know, in real time, just as well as what you can with.
side imaging. But the cool thing is that once you have that on there and you can do one scout transducer and one forward facing on there is you can identify where that pod of fish is at if it's moving upstream and cast to individual fish and you know right where they're at all the time because of just the way that you can view fish in real time with that technology. And then that sense when it's like if you're going to put it
you know, an eight ounce jig in a minnow in front of a walleye. And it's, you know, late February, March, April, you know, they're going to bite. It's almost like shooting fish out of a barrel, like that old adage, right? Cause it's like, if there's 12 fish there, I can go catch all 12 in about 14 casts. You know, once you get dialed in that, you know, you know, you're going to cast and put the bait where you want it. Cause really that's the thing with the forward facing sonar is like, if you're scanning around as being able to cast and hit what you're looking at, right.
Brian Bashore (19:42.635)
Literally.
Justin Sieverding (20:00.815)
And once you get dialed in on that, it's just game over if you can get those fish to bite.
Brian Bashore (20:05.762)
To say, well, you side image now you just get a not spook them or you will pass them to see them and then have to stop and throw back or drive back around and get set up and then hope, you know, pray and hope they're still there.
Justin Sieverding (20:08.539)
Yup.
Justin Sieverding (20:17.231)
Yep. And like I'm seeing, you know, some of the bass guys do this where they're mounting that, you know, one of the forward-facing sonar transducers on their jack plate. And like I played around with that last fall because now you can go to points and yeah, you can do the whole side imaging thing. Like you come around the perimeter of the point, you don't have to get close to the fish. But it's like, sometimes it's, is that a rock? Is that a fish? You know, that's the whole thing with side imaging.
Brian Bashore (20:42.719)
Right.
Justin Sieverding (20:44.723)
Um, where now it's like, I pull up there and I'm just shooting off to the, the starboard side of the boat, you know, driver's side of the boat and it's like, oh, there's two big fish sitting there. And I just turned around, put the swimming water down and boom, I'm on them. I don't even pay attention to my side imaging and that, and it just shortens. You know, your learning curve as to where the fish are. And if you're on a pattern, um, or a technique that you know, you're going to go catch him. It's like, I can go scan a point and put.
If I see three fish on them, I can go put two or three of those fish in the box in five minutes, instead of spending 10 minutes just driving around with 2D sonars or side scan looking for them. So it is just an amazing technology. It probably needs to be limited a little in tournament use, in my opinion. Well, just a story like the very first time I ever used Active Target,
Brian Bashore (21:30.41)
I say, when is too much? Too much, right? We got them on the back of the boat, the front of the boat. It's.
Justin Sieverding (21:42.107)
I'll never forget this. I got it at like 10 o'clock in the morning. FedEx got it to my house and dropped it off. And I had been waiting for it for months. It seemed like I was the last guy in the universe to get it, you know, and it's like, it showed up, I went over to Capitol Marine and Arlo put it on my boat. Uh, I already had the right height turret mount put on my Lawrence ghost waiting for it. And put it on there. I drove, it takes me five minutes to get to the West shore boat ramp at the Oahe dam, you know, I went up.
put the boat in, ran up to false twin bays. There's this big point that runs out and I put the troll motor down and I was thinking and I was told and had seen where the fish were like 40 to 50 feet deep, right? So like, that's like the depth I came running up to. I was in like 60 feet and I was gonna just move myself up into that shallower water and start fishing. Well, I put my trolling motor in the water, transducers in the water, pointed up the point.
and I see this like blob sitting up at like, I don't know, it was probably like 20 feet. We'll just say like half as deep as what I was gonna target, but I could see a fish there. So I cast my jigging wrap up there and I give it a couple of cranks fish chases, boom, catch it, get it. It's like an eight pound walleye. I would have never ever even casted to that fish or known that fish existed without that technology because I was gonna be looking twice as deep as what that fish was sitting.
And that was like such an eye opening moment for me, both the effectiveness of, you know, forward facing sonar technology, but also that us as walleye fishermen, sometimes we get a little, you know, like blinders on as to where these fish are at. It's like, well, it's August, they have to be deep. And it's like, now they don't have to be, that's just where a lot of them are at. But there's also a lot of them shallow, you know, they're just going to be wherever they can get food, right? So.
Brian Bashore (23:31.598)
Thanks for watching!
Yep. The literature tells us they're going to be deep. They're going to do this. You got to do this. You got to pull bouncers and slow death and troll cranks. But the reality is that's a predator fish and it's going to be wherever the bait is. The bait is, and I've got a lot of walleye. I tried to fish out all the time because I rather cast to them in two to three, four foot of water in August, in July and hundred degree days. Because that's where the bait is. The wind blew the shad up or where white bass moved them up and walleyes are right there following. No.
Justin Sieverding (23:39.183)
Yeah. Yup.
Justin Sieverding (24:03.619)
Yep. They're not going to be far away. So it's, and in that sense, you know, it really changed the way I looked at things too. Like I, I love casting and it like, to your point, just saying like you like cast two to four feet of water, you know, late summer, you know, I'm, I'm that guy that I used to not really look at that, but now I'll go up there and check it out. So just because of that one instance where it's like, there was a big fish sitting in a place that I never thought he would be. And then throughout the course of the rest of that day,
I found tons of fish up in that shallow water. And the only, oh yeah, yep. And the only reason I saw it or became aware of it was because of forward-facing sonar. I would have never ever, if I was just 2D sonar fishing, I would have never seen that fish.
Brian Bashore (24:34.262)
You can eliminate water so much faster.
Brian Bashore (24:46.302)
Now you're stuck on 40, 50 foot all day long and you would have been catching fish. I'm sure.
Justin Sieverding (24:48.207)
Yep. And I would have just said, oh, I would have went and caught all the 14, 15 inch walleyes you ever wanted, you know?
Brian Bashore (24:53.07)
Exactly. We don't want those in tournament so that's about we're looking for that one eight pounder somewhere so especially in the rivers.
Justin Sieverding (24:57.971)
Yeah. And that, yeah. And now when I can like go see that eight pounder, like I was just saying, it's tough for me to leave that eight pounder. You know, it's like, come on, baby, just come get in the boat. I just want to take you for a little boat ride. You can be back home here in a little while. But, you know, they're just not cooperative.
Brian Bashore (25:17.93)
Nope. I've heard a lot of guys say that they struggle with them in rivers, but it depends on what kind of river you're on. Missouri rivers are current. Isn't ripping, you know, like the Mississippi in cases. So those fish are a little easier, you know, versus sometimes Mississippi where they're just, the river fish are moving. They just can't sit there by a rock all day. They have to, they got to swim. They got to move. They didn't get washed downstream versus, you know, an inland lake in Minnesota where they can literally just hang out on the bottom by a rock all day long. You know,
Justin Sieverding (25:36.443)
Yup.
Justin Sieverding (25:43.951)
Yeah. So like last year when we were at Prairie du Chien, you know, on the Mississippi and the river was like 10 foot over flood stage and, you know, the currents like six miles an hour ripping through there. I tried desperately to get my, you know, active target to find fish, you know, behind humps and bumps out in the main current. And I really struggled with that, but I could go through their side imaging downstream and be like, you see the little, the little curvature to the bottom, the little washout. And it's like, there's a whole school of fish sitting behind there.
Brian Bashore (25:51.352)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Sieverding (26:14.388)
And so in that sense, yeah, side imaging just put active target to shame there. So, but also that's a pretty unique instance because the current was just wild.
Brian Bashore (26:26.478)
And we go to Red Wing early this year for NWT and you may be facing some of the same situation there. I know we've tried two times over the last five years and canceled due to floods. Um, later in May, so we should be good to go, especially with the, it appears to be the water's, you know, already open up there. So.
Justin Sieverding (26:28.763)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (26:43.143)
Cause as I say, in 2020 we were supposed to start there and 2021, right? And both times like, well, 2020 was obviously COVID then I think we started in Oconto and then 2021 I think they switched to what Chamberlain? Bagel? Okay. Bagel. Okay. Yeah. I remember it was, it was just like, no, we're not going to be able to do it. So, yep.
Brian Bashore (26:46.862)
Mm-hmm.
Brian Bashore (26:54.454)
Bagel. Yeah, we moved it to Bagel like two weeks out because it was flooded out.
Yeah, in 20, yeah, it was COVID. It was going to get canceled because it flooded anyway. Then they all got, they all got bumped and we didn't start until like July or something like that in O'Connell. Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (27:05.923)
Yeah. Because as I say, July out of Oconto in 2020 is pretty crazy, but.
Brian Bashore (27:16.19)
Yeah. So looking forward to that. So we got NWT coming up last season was interesting to say the least. Let's put it that way. Right. What, what are your thoughts on the schedule? Uh, how you feel about last year? I mean, you said, yeah, you know, you got sucked into the live image thing and that kind of affected you in the points.
Justin Sieverding (27:35.855)
So, last year I just, I sucked. And you know, that's just on me. Like I love golfing, I love tournament fishing. And at the end of the day, it's just on you, right? Like I can't go blame anybody. So, you know, it's just me. And I tried relying too much on forward facing sonar at times instead of just going fishing. So, you know, just little mental changes in that sense. And then sometimes you just suck. Like, you know, you're walleye fishing. And so, you know, I.
Brian Bashore (27:59.382)
Yeah, I'm a nerd.
Justin Sieverding (28:01.903)
Yeah, so like, yeah, it's kind of bruises the ego a little, but I, um, yeah. So me personally, not the best year ever, but it had to happen at some point. So I think I got it out of my system, but overall, like. I, the national walleye tour itself, the.
company or the organization that runs it, like I think they kind of drop the ball on a few things, especially towards the end of the season. We learn that, especially we can complain like, well, everybody's got to follow the rules, right? And it's like, well, we don't all have to play by the same rules. We've learned that at Sault Ste. Marie and we're still kind of dealing with those consequences. And it's all theoretical because nobody knows what's exactly going on. We get no information.
Um, but then you look at the schedule they laid out for us this year and it's like, we go to, uh, port Clinton, Ohio and on Lake Erie, I love Lake Erie. Anyone that likes walleye fishing loves Lake Erie because you can go out there and catch a hundred walleyes a day. And you know, in, and then that forward facing sonar thing is going to come into play, like, are we going to be late enough where we can go cast to individual fish? Um, and, and catch them, you know, are we going to be trolling, you know, what, what's going to happen there? But.
You know, no Canada this year, obviously we can go coal. Uh, so, you know, if you can find a pot of big fish, you know, grams are going to be post spawn. So you might get, you know, five 30 inch fish for 35 pounds that time of the year, but that's still a good bag of fish. Yeah. But then, you know, we go to, um, Red Wing, like you mentioned after that, and it, you know, originally it's like, well, we can't go into Wisconsin waters. Well, now we can go into Wisconsin waters and we can have four fish, put four fish in the box, no calling you're done for the day.
Brian Bashore (29:34.55)
Pretty good. All right.
Justin Sieverding (29:50.159)
And yep, they updated. We can go into Wisconsin waters. Actually, you know what? I might be lying, but I'm a hundred percent positive. They changed that we can fish out of Wisconsin waters now. And yeah, so, you know, just in the beauty of technology here, I just. To make sure that I'm, uh, I'm not telling a fib. Why don't I just check it out here?
Brian Bashore (29:50.198)
We can go to Wisconsin, they updated that.
Brian Bashore (30:02.126)
I did not hear that or notice that.
Brian Bashore (30:13.318)
There was only Minnesota waters only which is one over twenty and you can coal.
Justin Sieverding (30:16.911)
Yeah, it was Minnesota waters only. Yeah. So, yeah. And, but, you know, the whole thing is that, uh, yeah, both Minnesota and Wisconsin waters are open for NWT anglers. So I'm looking at the fact sheet right now, but we can have, you know, four fish per day, one fish per boat over 20 inches and so, yep, yep. So it's like this whole dynamic now. Uh, that.
Brian Bashore (30:39.463)
Only one fish per boat.
All right, updated fact sheet.
Justin Sieverding (30:47.187)
And that changed from what they originally posted, right? Um, and you know, from like my perspective and, you know, just being a guy that likes to go tournament fish, you know, it's like, sometimes if you're going to limit it out like that, it's not that much fun. And it's like, why are we even going there? If, if you're going to put that restriction and then it gets even worse when we leave Red Wing. Um, I think is the next stop, Oconto after that, and then it's three fish, right? We're on the Bay of Green Bay.
Brian Bashore (30:50.497)
Right.
Brian Bashore (31:15.628)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (31:16.675)
And we catch three fish, no culling, and you're done for the day. So it's like, Oh, here you come to the, yeah, here you come to the scale. Three fish for, if you don't have a good day, here's three fish for six pounds, you know, or it's like three fish. If you have a really good day, three fish for 24 pounds. And it's like, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's just that I don't understand like the thinking behind.
Brian Bashore (31:23.903)
It's the whole.
Brian Bashore (31:35.906)
where you go out and you fish for 15 minutes and you're done.
Justin Sieverding (31:46.535)
the federation when they put these restrictions on, when they're the ones that make the schedule, right? Like there's a million places to go fishing. Like why send us to these places where, and it's like, it puts us in a position where if somebody just looks at the results and they're like, oh man, you had four pounds. And it's like, well, yeah, I had three pound in the third fish, you know? It's like, yeah, yeah. It's like, you have no idea how proud I am with that four pounds either, you know? So, but.
Brian Bashore (32:06.63)
I was blowing like hell. I had to jump up the river and jig up three fish and go way in.
Brian Bashore (32:14.49)
Right.
Justin Sieverding (32:16.383)
But I just, some of that stuff I don't understand why it is that they're putting these restrictions on us. You know, we invest a lot of money into traveling and supporting, and I just, I don't get it. So, we'll see.
Brian Bashore (32:30.706)
No, that's Wisconsin party fishing regulations that are requiring that and the anglers ask for tighter restrictions at the championship to eliminate the gray area. We want to ever have been Canadian waters again, because I believe Robert said to realize their insurance isn't covered in Canadian waters and it's just so many variables, just eliminate it, which is perfectly fine with me, especially if you're in the Sioux and Erie, there's no, you got plenty of water. I mean, let's just make it simple. It's not the international walleye tour. It's the, you know.
Justin Sieverding (32:34.769)
Yup.
Justin Sieverding (32:50.459)
Yep, oh yeah, way too many. Yep.
Justin Sieverding (32:58.101)
Yep.
Brian Bashore (33:01.926)
We can keep all our money in the United States down here, nothing against the normal Canadians, as Austin referred to them as versus the other ones, but we keep that money in those host cities. But yeah, so Wisconsin is a non-party fish state, which basically means you have a three-fish limit, I believe. So once you catch your three fish, you're done fishing. And we had that at Bagel last year where, okay, you caught your three, you were done, but the conversation with the COs was
Justin Sieverding (33:13.381)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (33:30.286)
Whoever had the rod in their hand when the fish came in the boat is who caught that. So you could reel it all the way in, hand it to the Co or Pro and then net it. And then took away that, that person's fish. And the reality is once you got your three coangulars done, you know, or once you have five in a boat, somebody's done no matter what. And, you know, in most cases, I was all the coangular.
Justin Sieverding (33:45.927)
Yeah, yup.
Brian Bashore (33:53.254)
I think just what they're trying to eliminate that whole, did he do this or did they not? Who actually caught it? You know what? You just get three fish. Which, in a sense, if that's going to be the case at that tournament, we just shouldn't be there.
Justin Sieverding (33:53.309)
And like.
Justin Sieverding (34:05.295)
Yeah, 100%. I am in 100% agreement, eliminate out the gray area. Let's make it where we're all playing by the same set of rules, we're all getting judged the same way, 100%. But then it comes down to, if you're gonna set a schedule, why limit us to what we can do? There are so many other places we could go fishing. I love going to the Bay of Green Bay. Green Bay treats me well every time we go there. Love going there.
Brian Bashore (34:11.565)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Sieverding (34:35.067)
But if I can only go there and catch three fish, then what's the, you know, for me, it's like, what's the point because sometimes as tournament fishermen, the difference between cashing a check and not cashing a check is the difference between someone catching nine fish and someone catching 10 fish, right? Like it's that small. And now it's, we're reducing that down to three fish. So it's like that burden to bring in a limit is all that much less.
There's a little bit of gameplay there because it's well if I can only keep three what size do they have to be? In order for me to keep one like is it 25 inches is it 28 inches whereas before?
Brian Bashore (35:14.126)
Well, it's going to fish small, the whole lake is now because everybody's going to run north, trying to catch three big fish. Right?
Justin Sieverding (35:16.934)
Oh yeah.
Justin Sieverding (35:20.283)
Yeah, I was gonna say everybody's gonna... Yeah, and cause then is it once you hit Wisconsin, or not Wisconsin, Michigan, we can only have two big ones, something like that. I don't know, there's some funky rules up, like once you get up to like Little Bay, Danak, and stuff like that too, but yeah. But yeah, I can't remember what that is, but yeah, I think when we leave Oconto, like the last time we were in Oconto, I think was in 2020, and you know...
Brian Bashore (35:26.059)
Michigan.
Brian Bashore (35:35.174)
Oh yeah, once you get way up there, then it changes. There's slot, there's slot sizes and crap like that, but I don't think you'll have to go that far north.
Justin Sieverding (35:49.103)
Most everybody turned right when we came out of the river down to like Peshtigo and stuff like that to go drag the mud. You know, I think Corey won that tournament and he ran north, but I think you're gonna see the vast majority of boats taking a hard left turn out of the river this year, to your point, because it's like, we're gonna go up north and just bet the farm that we can catch three big fish.
Brian Bashore (36:04.447)
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Brian Bashore (36:08.81)
Yep, Corey won that one. We went again, 2021. That's when we had that one day.
Justin Sieverding (36:16.079)
Yeah, that was out of Sturgeon Bay. Yeah. Yep.
Brian Bashore (36:17.898)
that was out of Sturgeon, but O'Connell. Yeah. It was 2020 and yeah, Corey won that one, which is, he does well on them. And then a Woodke won 2021 going North or somewhat North, but yeah, that was a one day deal and, uh, you can't zero if you zeroed, you don't make championship period.
Justin Sieverding (36:26.508)
Yup.
Justin Sieverding (36:37.647)
Yeah, no, that's like that when we were at a sturgeon bay, that was one of those tournaments. I think I had like one fish for like three pounds and I was more. I was so proud of that fish. You couldn't imagine because I speared a wave coming. Like I was going up to Minneapolis shul and I speared a wave and it ripped the front graphs off my boat. Like I had a couple hundred gallons of water. It broke. I, it was, it was crazy, right?
Brian Bashore (36:48.172)
Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (36:55.887)
Oh no.
Brian Bashore (37:04.347)
It was horrible.
Justin Sieverding (37:05.639)
And like, I felt so bad for my co-angler. And if he is listening to this, I still apologize. Like we're three years removed. Um, but, uh, like it was just fricking crazy out there. And, you know, well, we probably shouldn't have been out there anyway. Like, you know, it's like five footers. Um, but, uh, but you know, like to come in, like, I remember who came across the stage and Anthony was just riding me into the ground. He's like, cause we came in early, you know, it's just soaking wet, but I had my three. He's like, man, you know, you had.
Brian Bashore (37:20.918)
Alright. Oh, it was horrible.
Justin Sieverding (37:33.979)
You had all day to be out there and I was like, Anthony, I got a fish. Like I'm going to get some points out of this deal. Like, you know, and I had like, there's like 140 boats in that field. And I got like 75th place with like three pounds. So like, I was so happy about that, you know, but there were a lot of guys that took zeros, you know? Yep. So yeah, if you take a zero now, especially you have, we have so much. Or we had, we'll see how 2024 plays out, but, uh, we've had so much. Like.
Brian Bashore (37:47.05)
Oh, I, I lie. And they didn't make championship. I mean.
Justin Sieverding (38:04.035)
involvement with anglers in the National Wildlife Tour the last couple of years, you know, like, you know, 125 plus fields, like for every tournament, it's just fantastic to see. But you have so many guys going to every tournament now that are fishing the entire tour that you can have no missteps and plan on making the tournament or the championship, right? And at the end of the day, that's what we're all fishing for because we love the free entry. So, you know, pay 50% of the field plus free entry. Yeah, sign me up. So.
Brian Bashore (38:20.77)
um, championship.
Brian Bashore (38:28.255)
Right, right.
Brian Bashore (38:33.97)
Yep. Yeah. And the championship this year is a different place, a whole different deal. You know, last year we had beautiful weather, it was great. Tournaments were good minus all the drama and other crap that went on, which we didn't need any more black eyes in this, in this deal after the whole Lake Erie weights and fish.
Justin Sieverding (38:51.964)
I thought the weights and fish deal was going to be the end of it, but that's just the beginning. Now it's like, hey, we got night crawlers and fish. So it's like, I don't know.
Brian Bashore (38:59.75)
Yeah, it's, it's jacked. It is jacked. It, it stole a lot of the suck the air out of the championship a little bit. You know, when that was, I mean, that was phenomenal. Hoyer and everybody, you guys are breaking records on daily bags up there. I mean, it's just insane, which you can accredit that to good anglers and forward facing sonar and picking out those fish, you know, I mean.
Justin Sieverding (39:07.055)
Yeah, yep.
Justin Sieverding (39:19.215)
Yeah, if you're gonna give John Hoyer like another advantage casting with Forward Facing Sonar, just forget about it. You know, it's like, you know...
Brian Bashore (39:26.398)
Right. Yeah. Dudes got a dial. That green bay turbot. That was, that was brutal. We all kind of knew it was going to be a one dayer. I was in the same situation. I went straight across, Sturgeon into O'Connell to go to the river or to Marinette, whatever. And got there, trolling motor was broke into pieces, you know, because I went to lower it and I was like, what is all the shrapnel on the front deck? And it was, it was an old trick. So it was just the parts. So I grabbed one of the pieces that broken.
stuck it in there because it was hanging like this, but it held me on spot lock, it still held, but it wasn't sturdy ball means the head was kind of hanging over, but it worked. And we jigged that Billy Atkins was my co. We had a blast because we were just pitching jig crawler and I was boat one 10 out of one, the last boat out. And, uh, I said, we're just going to go jig up a fish. So we have our fish. I said, we can go jig up a 15 inch real quick, and then we're going to go pull spinners, but when the trolling motor was busted into pieces, I was like, we're just going to jig some fish up. And.
Justin Sieverding (39:59.125)
Oh, yep.
Brian Bashore (40:26.166)
and go in and we caught our six. I think the biggest was 18 and caught a sturgeon, caught smallies, just caught 30, 40 fish and went across weight in at 10 o'clock. You know, with like eight pounds. That was good enough for 40th or something, you know? Like, wow.
Justin Sieverding (40:36.251)
Yep, yeah, that was.
Justin Sieverding (40:40.443)
That was just brutal. I'll never forget that. We had that no wake zone that was three quarters of a mile long. And then we came out and since you're back in Sturgeon Bay, it's dead flat calm. And I had this little 206 fish hunter with a 300 Pro XS and that thing was just a rocket. And I remember I just had that thing cooking out to the mouth. I mean just back on pad, just passing everybody. And we got out to the front of the bay and I was like...
Brian Bashore (40:50.082)
No.
Brian Bashore (40:53.845)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (41:08.603)
Oh my God. Like, jack plate down, trim down, throttle back, and then I, this is no joke, I sat behind John Hoyer because I thought he was going up to like Chambers Island. I was like, I'm gonna let him eat waves. And like my kicker motor, like the tie bar broke and I shut the boat down, spear wave. I, it was just, it was a disaster and I was like, oh I, yeah, I mean my, my finger graph mount was out of the front of the boat. It just, it like...
Brian Bashore (41:10.197)
Oh, no good.
Brian Bashore (41:19.18)
Alright.
Brian Bashore (41:28.222)
Oh, it's, it's horrible.
Brian Bashore (41:36.042)
It didn't matter what you had, it was going to take just the ultimate beating that it's not supposed to take.
Justin Sieverding (41:38.767)
Yeah. And I think like a couple minutes after that happened to me, I think Hoyer lost his trolling motor, like off his boat and it's like it, and then, you know, like we get back and like, I was eating lunch and I was like, I don't even know why we were out there, but it was still fun. So, you know.
Brian Bashore (41:56.282)
I was sitting in the Billy and I went across streets of the bar and had lunch and you know At like 11 or something and I'm watching live stuff from the on the water type things and there's chase He's up north and it's like flat calm and beautiful I'm like, where the hell are these guys think they're up by Cedar Point But they were out of the wind because it was north whatever north side, I guess northeast But I was like, how is it so nice up there? There's even TV coverage of it I'm like what but we had to get there
Justin Sieverding (42:09.515)
Oh!
Justin Sieverding (42:13.603)
Okay. Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (42:24.074)
And obviously, and I don't know if it got better throughout the day or not, or if it got worse, or if you came in at three, if it was, it felt like it, cause you had constant shower of waves coming over your boat.
Justin Sieverding (42:29.359)
Wasn't it raining too?
Justin Sieverding (42:35.747)
I can't remember. I just, yeah, I don't know. But hey, we got to go fishing, so there's that.
Brian Bashore (42:41.646)
I know I aimed to go straight across and back my graph out so I could see it and I ended up a couple three miles south of where I wanted to go because I couldn't. You know, the time I got there, I'm like, we should be here. Then I was like, oh crap. Now I got to turn and go right into it, you know, for a couple of miles just to get into that mouth of the river. And then you're in there and it was fine.
Justin Sieverding (42:50.692)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (43:01.168)
Yeah. No, like my, like why I still apologize to my coangler, his seat actually ripped out of the floor when this all happened. So like the big like size 14 lag bolts they put in the floor of the boat, they all ripped out like you just, so it's like even if we had fished day two I would have just had to withdrawn because you just weren't gonna do anything. Like we had to go back and have a little fiberglass work done on that boat.
Brian Bashore (43:12.197)
Right?
Brian Bashore (43:24.706)
Ray.
Justin Sieverding (43:24.951)
And I loved that boat. There was a little rocket ship, but it was not designed to go 30 miles an hour over five and a half foot waves. So lesson learned. Yep.
Brian Bashore (43:32.806)
No, no, I was looking for trolling motor parts and I was like cardenas. Can I just borrow your trolling motor tomorrow? He's like, yeah Yeah, we can slide it off stick it on your boat if you need it I'm like, okay, because I need to go pull spinners over weeds. I was on a 20 25 pound bike, you know, which I think would keep one with like 40 pounds and he literally weighed in right behind me So he went he came in
Justin Sieverding (43:47.951)
Yeah, yep. Yeah, that always makes you feel good. Like, yeah, he went over there and did all that, came in and he's got 40 pounds. And then, you know, but. Ha ha ha. Yep.
Brian Bashore (43:54.654)
Yeah, I weighed in first at eight pounds and I'm leading it and I'm like, whoo, next guy was maybe it was Shakira. Cause then Woodke and Jason had like 25 or 30 pounds. Yeah. I let Woodke come in. I was like, yeah, yeah. He's damage. Spray. Some of those guys really got that green Bay thing. It green Bay's never treated me well ever. It just.
Justin Sieverding (44:01.807)
Yeah, as I say, Jason had a good day. Yeah. Imagine that Jason having a good day. Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (44:12.837)
I love going there. I love, I just love fishing Green Bay. It always treats me well, except that one time now that you brought up Sturgeon Bay. But that, but yeah, but it's still, I guess at the end of the day, since I made the championship, it treated me okay.
Brian Bashore (44:20.819)
Alright. I did treat it too well.
Brian Bashore (44:28.122)
Those are my favorite walleye though. They are mean as hell. The color is beautiful, especially when you get those ones up north. And they're just, they fight versus like an April Lake Erie walleye. Whatever, it's really in a wet towel.
Justin Sieverding (44:33.364)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (44:39.659)
like, like I was gonna say, like a Walmart bag on the end of your line. But those fish, yeah, they fight like the first time I ever went there, I was pulling spinners out in the mud and I just I had one very an offshore board. And, you know, like around here, we really don't open water troll spinners. And so I really didn't know what I was doing, kind of guessing. And this board goes back and it sinks and it's like really fighting. And I thought, man, I have a big drum on.
And so I'm just like, I'm just horsing this thing in. Yeah. And I'm just horsing it in and I'm, you know, cussing, you know, cause I, I really don't like night crawlers in the boat anyway. And it's like, I got night crawlers all over the place and, and I just haul in this thing and I get up beside the boat and it's like a 10 pound wall and I went from like mad to like, oh, where's the net at, you know, trying to like put it in the boat. And I'm like netted and I'm out by myself, pre-fishing. I'm like, oh man, this is awesome. You know, and it's just, that's kind of how I fell in love with it. Cause that was down.
Brian Bashore (45:05.174)
which plenty of.
Justin Sieverding (45:33.939)
whatever that southern border is, you know, that we can go to. Yeah, yeah. And it's like you get down there, it seems like all those fish are like two miles on the wrong side of that line every time we're there, you know. But it's like, in that instance, like everybody was just like trolling that line east and west. And that's what I was doing, didn't know any better. And it's like, wow, there's just a ton of big fish in here. And they fight like no other walleye that you're going to find. They have that just dark gold color and just they fight like...
Brian Bashore (45:36.154)
Brown County line of a shark's fin. Yeah.
Brian Bashore (45:43.822)
Right.
Brian Bashore (46:01.174)
Mm-hmm.
Justin Sieverding (46:03.527)
bass. It's crazy. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Brian Bashore (46:04.834)
Yeah, they're angry.
Yep. That does make it that that's what I look forward to of going to green Bay is the, the angry wall. I like for sure. Uh, we finished the season up in Sakaka. Um, my favorite place, but you know, we're back to North Dakota. So that's our last stop. So
Justin Sieverding (46:14.488)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (46:21.687)
Oh yeah, last stop, Yup, Sakakuea, yup. They finally changed the rules so we can go back up there.
Brian Bashore (46:28.818)
Yep, not only did they change it, they went from $5,000 maximum tournament fees, which is what they'd been paying, to like 250 bucks.
Justin Sieverding (46:37.263)
Yeah. So I mean, it kind of shows like the economic impact that, you know, like guys showing up there. I mean, you think about it like if you get 100 tournament fishermen, right, that show up there, and you know that it'll be a lot bigger number than that. But we're all putting, you know, $150 a day worth of fuel in the boat. You know, we're eating hotel state. Like, just look at the economic impact. So I kind of thought that was a weird move by North Dakota to just say,
Hey, we don't want you to come up to like one of the best fisheries in the country and spend your money up here anymore. And I get the politics behind all that stuff, but it like, if as a small business owner, it's like, man, I want those guys to come to town and spend their money.
Brian Bashore (47:20.41)
Yeah, it was horrible. It was slid in like a lot of things is because people aren't paying attention to commission meetings or certain legislative stuff, cause it's lame and you don't understand a lot of verbiage. And it was written underneath and it's called a conservation fee. It wasn't, you know, titled in the agendas tournament entry fee or tournament, you know, application fees or whatever. And so, yeah, we made, raised some stink about that through NPA, CSF, and got tourism out there on board and Susie, of course, the devil's lake was really good.
Uh, Jeremy Oles, Johnny Candle, Zach Axman, those locals up there, uh, just did what they needed to do and reached out to all the right, you know, senators and stuff, and once it came in that, uh, secretary of game fishing parks up there was no longer there. You get a lot of that with all the States that you get some older generation, basically who doesn't want the non-residents in there hunting their fish and whatever we have that going on right now in South Dakota.
Supposed to be a hearing yesterday on SB 35 and SB 74 a natural resource committee where SB 35 or 135 Was raised in the or taken away though So a one-day fishing license in South Dakota or hunting license does not require the habitat stamp It's $25 for non-residents $10 for residents if you buy anything over the one day They wanted to charge $25 for a habitat stamp for one day fishing license, so now you're paying $41
When you're in the Hills on vacation, doing the Mount Rushmore thing, you're like, Oh, let's go fly fishing for an hour for $41. It ain't happening. You know, or loose Clark, where I'm at, granted they would just told us by Nebraska license for seven bucks and bypass this, which is exactly what's going to happen here on out regardless is it, is this horrible? That's a horrible, horrible idea. And that SB 174 is raising the $25 habitat step from 25 to $50.
Well, these things are supposed to be here yesterday. Uh, the chairman had some type of emergency, so they didn't have the hearing. So now it's next Tuesday, cause that's the final day for any hearings out of committees. Cause we have a short, uh, 30 something day legislative session this year. I think it's been modified from 25 to 10. Uh, I know Mike Allen was up there yesterday testifying and, uh, Lisa, she'll be back next week from Missouri river tourism, you know, just saying this isn't, you didn't think this out well on the commit to started in the game commission in October.
Brian Bashore (49:47.55)
And tabled and tabled what usually happens when the commission can't make decisions. They punt it to some legislator to introduce this bill. Herman Otten did the 135, somebody else entered 174. And, uh, that's where it's at, but it's like, why are you trying to keep people out of here from coming over for two or three days, dumping a bunch of money and, and going home.
Justin Sieverding (50:07.879)
Yep. Well, especially like you, you like, you like, I haven't guided for like a decade or more, like I used to, when David Heelan ran Spring Creek, I did some guiding for them and, but like you, you're out on the water all the time. And it's like, you get guys that they might not even be coming to South Dakota with the intention of going fishing, but they get here and they're like, man, we have a down day, you know, like, let's get ahold of somebody to see if they'll take us fishing. And they, you know, they're calling you up and like, Hey, you got availability tomorrow?
Yep, yep, I do. Okay. Here's, here are the details. And then they come in and it's like, I'm not going to spend 40 bucks to go fishing for a day. You know, and, and it's just like, so then, then there's that economic loss, right? Like takes money out of your pocket. Um, you know, I just, sometimes I don't understand why we do some of the things we do so, you know, and it's like, I don't, I don't know, and I try to not be too vocal about.
Brian Bashore (50:45.623)
Yeah, it's...
Brian Bashore (50:57.682)
Oh, what?
Justin Sieverding (51:06.887)
my logic behind it, but it's like, all you're doing is hurting small businesses. Like, and supposedly we're in a state that's open for business. Like that's our motto, right? So I don't, I don't know.
Brian Bashore (51:16.45)
Right?
Brian Bashore (51:19.874)
We're open for business, but it's gonna cost you a lot.
Justin Sieverding (51:23.388)
Yeah, business is expensive.
Brian Bashore (51:25.858)
Freedom, but not free. I mean, there's a cost to doing business, but yeah, I'm not quite about my opinion on this stuff and never will be.
Justin Sieverding (51:29.291)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (51:32.527)
Yeah, no, and I, you know, I, I'm starting to find I should just probably be a little more vocal about stuff like, you know, even, uh, well this going back to forward facing Sona, I get tons and tons of people that reach out to me that want like a one day, you know, like they, they'll pay me to just go fishing for one day. That's like, I don't really do that. Right. But they just, they want to learn. And it's like in the summertime, if I'm going to go out and people want to go out and go fishing, like I'm going to make them buy a fishing license. So like this could affect something I may or may not do. Like if I.
Brian Bashore (52:01.89)
Oh yeah.
Justin Sieverding (52:02.243)
You know, people want to go learn forward facing sonar with me or just spend the day in the boat. And it's like, why do we make it so difficult for small business, especially in the tourism industry, that's hunting and fishing deal in the state of South Dakota, where we just pound our chest with pride about all of these natural resources we have, but we want to limit out who can come take part in it. And then on top of that, if you do want to take part in it and we want to allow you to do it.
Brian Bashore (52:24.974)
Thanks for watching!
Justin Sieverding (52:29.295)
just going to charge you through the teeth for it. And I mean, it's, it's not like our resident licenses are that cheap either. You know, it's like, yeah.
Brian Bashore (52:35.198)
No, we have some of the highest priced, one day license is the highest price there is in all surrounding States. You know, it's.
Justin Sieverding (52:42.939)
Yeah, I was gonna say like my hunting and fishing license, like I just do the auto-renew thing so I don't have to worry about it. Like just, I get an email one day that says, hey, we just build your credit card in. And then I get the little plastic card so I don't have to like, you know, my wallet ends up in the lake. Like, hey, can you read this? Like, you know, this was paper and it added to my QR code on it, you know? But it's like, then I look at my credit card, so it's like.
Brian Bashore (53:01.575)
Right. The drink, yep.
Justin Sieverding (53:10.963)
$105, you know, for my hunting and fishing, you know, granting us like, you know, I got my small games license on there and habitat stamp and my waterfall stamp and my fur bearer license and all that stuff. But it's like, that's a lot of money at the end of the day. Like it just paid over a hundred dollars to go use my state's natural resources. So I don't know. And then they just make it tougher for.
Brian Bashore (53:18.146)
habitat stamp, your waterfile stamp or whatever.
Yup.
Brian Bashore (53:32.972)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (53:37.359)
you know, non-residents come do it and tourism is like such an important part of our economy. I think it's second only to agriculture, right, in the state.
Brian Bashore (53:44.022)
Yep. And if commodity prices are down, it's first.
Justin Sieverding (53:47.087)
Yeah, yeah. So it's like, why do we spend so much effort into trying to limit, you know, tourism in hunting and fishing in the state? It just boggles my mind. But anyway.
Brian Bashore (53:58.114)
I mean, we're going to spend $1.9 million on the Super Bowl commercial. We must be doing all right.
Justin Sieverding (54:03.887)
Or for our governor to be a highway patrol officer and pull over Dusty Johnson. It is what it is.
Brian Bashore (54:09.534)
Yeah, I saw that yesterday. Or who knows how much that Super Bowl commercial costs, but I do know that they had a plethora of code funds that needed to get used up and there's timelines and all that, and I was part of some of those photos and video shoots and they were out of state agencies that came in to do it and I don't know if any was hired locally, but whatever.
Justin Sieverding (54:19.06)
Oh, yeah. Yep.
Justin Sieverding (54:30.715)
Yeah, decisions way above my pay grade. I'm just a lowly tournament fisherman. Yeah. Yep.
Brian Bashore (54:35.542)
I'm just trying to fish, man. I'm just trying to get by, you know, doing things and trying to enjoy what's out there. I mean, I've fished a new have all over the Midwest and places and our GFP does a pretty good job of, of managing our stuff versus, you know, other States. We have, we have, we have a huge conservation officer force out there, which more than I've ever seen anywhere. And I, Sam runs that as the head CO and I think they do a phenomenal job. I mean, it's always that whole.
Justin Sieverding (54:49.923)
I 100% agree with that, yep.
Brian Bashore (55:04.738)
cop pulling you over, a CO guy, you got, I got that, whatever. But I'm like, Hey, I'm glad to see you doing your job.
Justin Sieverding (55:07.355)
But it's also so important because there's a lot of, there's just a lot of people that wanna take advantage of a lot of that stuff, right? And it's like, it has to be done, right? I mean, just so, and those guys, the conservation officers, regardless of the state, it's almost a guarantee when they have an interaction with someone who they're investigating or just wanna check their license, they probably have a gun. So it's like.
Brian Bashore (55:15.945)
Oh yeah.
Brian Bashore (55:34.658)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (55:34.875)
You know, my hat's off to him because like you want to talk about law enforcement. That's really dangerous. Like here you are. Like you're dealing with people that probably have a gun most of the time, especially if it's hunting season, right? Like they're guaranteed to have a gun. It's like, oh, man, you guys are braver than I am. So.
Brian Bashore (55:39.914)
Yeah, yeah.
Brian Bashore (55:48.47)
They do a great day, very seldom. They stopped beyond the water. They do a little bit. Um, I see him a lot more this last year down in the Yankton, Lewis and Clark. That's got a place so busy, a second busiest state park in South Dakota behind Custer Omaha and Sioux city come through there. And the state campground is phenomenal. So the best in the country. So there's vacationers there and they use it, I think for a training ground for a lot of the new seals coming in, but they usually will get you at the docs, check at the docs and they're just looking for your life check. It's your fire extinguisher. If you have fish.
Interficial license, um, bear necessities. Yeah. It's pretty quick. Long. You can get access. Yep. And on the hunting side, they usually are waiting for you to get out of the field and meet you at the road, unless there's a reason for them to come in. So they're not harassing you or bothering you. Like I've seen in other States by all means, they're just this good dudes. I mean, they all hunt, they all fish. So, you know, they get it. You go to different States and South Dakota fits that mold. Sometimes the regulations aren't easy to understand for some people. So everybody wants to play that naive card, right? Which is.
Justin Sieverding (56:20.087)
Usually it's like a 45 second encounter, right? It's like, let me see this stuff. Here we go. Yeah, yeah.
Brian Bashore (56:47.726)
exactly what happened in WT last year, Sue St. Marie, right? I don't under, I don't get it, which I get cause shit ain't easy. It was confusing, you know, the benefit. I'll give him a little bit of that little grace there is yeah, you, you hear one thing and the CEO tells you one thing and something else is written in a different CEO tells you another, because you're dealing with different states and different countries and everybody's. All right.
Justin Sieverding (56:54.626)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (57:06.971)
different countries and they have different like live bait areas up there too. Like, you know, that whole deal at Sault Ste. Marie, I never, I mean, my boat might have cut a corner where I was in Canada for like half a second when I was running down towards detour and you come around that one island and the border runs way out. But like I never even bought a Canadian license, never went over there fishing because when we were at the championship in 2022 out of Dunkirk, you know, Ontario was the Canadian province across that we could go fish.
And when I looked into that, it was just such a rat's nest of regulation to go up there. It's like, I'm not even going to attempt it. So like when we're at Sault Ste. Marie, same deal. It's like, I'm not even going to go over there and attempt it, right? Because it's the FDA has rules on nightcrawlers, right? It's not even earthworms, but it's not even like the DNR that has the rule, right? It's like, it's a federal rule. And then it's, you know,
Brian Bashore (57:53.602)
Earthworms, earthworms, there's a difference between the two. Ha ha ha.
Brian Bashore (58:00.566)
Right.
Justin Sieverding (58:05.223)
Where's your boat located? How many fish over a certain size can you have? Who can catch these fish and who can catch that fish? And I was like, okay, I have no idea. I'm just gonna go down.
Brian Bashore (58:19.031)
Then you're coming back if you cut into certain waters. You're over limit. Right? Because you might have to go through Lake George on this part. Well, you can't have anything this big if you know. So you have to. It's just I did the same thing. I said I'm fishing US. I had night crawlers. I put them in a leach tamer. No dirt in the boat. Threw them in the back.
Justin Sieverding (58:22.423)
Oh yeah, so it's like.
Hey. Yup.
Justin Sieverding (58:36.631)
Oh, I'm like 100% no dirt in the boat. Otherwise, like I'm good at kicking things over. And it's like, I could do a little farming in the back of the boat if there's dirt on the nightcrawlers. It's like, oh, it's just disgusting.
Brian Bashore (58:42.084)
Yeah, I hate crawler dirt.
Brian Bashore (58:51.202)
It worked good throwing them in a couple dozen of least tamer and just throw that in up on the ice, the built in cooler. So I was like, that's, that's good. I mean, he had warm crap to deal with cause they were crapping all over. So it got all over the stuff, but it's ice and melted and it washed out and good to go. So.
Justin Sieverding (59:06.791)
Good to go, yep.
Brian Bashore (59:09.034)
Well, that was a hell of a season last year. A lot of ups and downs. Well, hopefully this year. I don't think the numbers will be better personally, as far as entries go.
Justin Sieverding (59:19.971)
As far as entries, I think it'll be down.
Brian Bashore (59:22.798)
I think it'll be down the... Yeah, I know quite a few guys that fished last year that I'm hearing that aren't fishing it this year for a lot of the...
Justin Sieverding (59:24.367)
I think it'll be down a lot, personally.
Justin Sieverding (59:32.095)
Yeah, there's a lot of sour feelings with the way in which the Federation managed out that Sault Ste. Marie tournament and then just kind of some of the attitudes they had throughout the year with the Anglers. And then, you know, they put out the new rules, right? They asked us to fill out the questionnaire and, you know, they want everyone's input. And I talked to a lot of people about it. It's like, oh, everyone's kind of in a lot of agreement with some of these changes we'd like to see.
They implemented like none of them, but then say, but then they wanna say like, well, don't criticize us, otherwise we're gonna fine you. For criticizing us, it's like, okay, well, mail me my fine.
Brian Bashore (01:00:02.67)
Exactly.
Brian Bashore (01:00:08.717)
Right.
Brian Bashore (01:00:13.178)
It's a cut and paste right out of a bass. They have that rule implemented. It's a sportsman's clause thing, but I mean, you can't take away your first amendment. So.
Justin Sieverding (01:00:19.535)
Yeah. And I mean, I don't have a problem with it, but it's like, yeah, exactly. Like, you know, we should be able to openly talk about it. Like I honestly, like I just, I love going and doing it. Right. And it's like, as long as we're all playing by the same rules, that's fine. Uh, and, and the elimination of gray area, that's good. But then put us on places where we can actually go, you know, fill the boat up with fish and bring in a nice limit of fish where we're
not out there scraping by with five pounds of fish to cash a check and just let everyone play like that. We have a massive amount of money. You figure before you even leave, you have $2,000 invested, right? And then it's like, by the time the week is over, it's like you have five, $6,000 invested. Like I want to go fishing when I get there and hopefully catching too, if I can get out of my own way.
Brian Bashore (01:01:09.038)
Right.
Justin Sieverding (01:01:12.319)
It's one of those deals. So I don't know behind the scenes why they chose some of the places we're going this year with the restrictions that are imposed. And I get they're trying to eliminate the gray area, but then just put us somewhere else where the gray area isn't needed to get around.
Brian Bashore (01:01:27.078)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know, their goal is to make good TV. Three Fish isn't going to make very good TV.
And he started to make good TV on the 32 day tournament and a 30 minute show. Um, but you know, it has gotten a little bit better. I'll give them that. Uh, but you know, if they do stuff like the tour gold stuff that those guys did, that was great TV.
Justin Sieverding (01:01:51.152)
I watched a couple of those and like, I have to give credit. Like it, it's good. Like there's just no getting around it. Yep.
Brian Bashore (01:01:55.062)
Yeah, they produced it well. You got to see some behind the scenes stuff. Now I get it. That's not what their, uh, careful guys are there to cover. Um, but you get a little bit more in depth than the boat and I'm using this and I'm doing this and kind of, and we don't really get a lot of that on the water, maybe that's somewhat part of the wall. The anglers are a little tight lip. Um, we're not obviously in front of the camera as much as the bass guys are. Uh, there's some changes this year. I know the championship, we got the media day built in, whether there's, you know, much media there or not. Uh,
Justin Sieverding (01:02:10.179)
at you.
Justin Sieverding (01:02:21.191)
Yep.
Brian Bashore (01:02:24.694)
Reality is most of us have to create our own which is exactly what we're doing here And why I started this so we could get some of these end up these walleye pros So media coverage and get them out there Let people get to know you a little bit better outside the you know, the guy the boat slinging and slinging and fish so Inside the Caymus anyway, right? So so
Justin Sieverding (01:02:41.999)
Yeah, got to get the Caymus boat wound up out there again this year. But like back to like talking about some of the media on the National Walleye Tour, like I just have to give so much credit to like Robert Cardenas on that because, you know, he since he's taken over that role, was that like 2021? You know, he's just done such a great job, like going and doing these interviews and you're just jumping in people's boats. And, and the nice thing there is like he'll hop in whoever's boat. It doesn't matter if they're running, you know, a Caymus boat like me.
Brian Bashore (01:02:58.71)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (01:03:11.819)
or like you and your Nitro or Ranger, or you got a Lund, like he's out talking. And I get a lot of feedback from people that pay attention to that coverage on the National Walleye Tour social media is they just love that. And a lot of that, that's Robert Cardenas out there doing it. So, my hat's off to him. Like I think he's really been a force behind the growth that the National Walleye Tour has seen over the last few years.
Brian Bashore (01:03:33.954)
Big time.
Brian Bashore (01:03:37.642)
Yeah, totally. Once he finally put somebody just in that sole position, you know, which he left the tournament fishing and created himself, you know, in the skillset and said, I'm going to learn to do this and how he does it for a lot. He's out there filming from the next bike guys, you know, he's doing stuff for striking and, and lose and Salmo. And yeah, he's just, he's done great. He's really self-taught. Um, probably going to get him on one of these podcasts here eventually as well.
Justin Sieverding (01:03:44.058)
Yep.
Justin Sieverding (01:03:59.763)
Probably need to. He's just such a great guy. He's just super talented. Enough propping up his ego. Let's just cut this part out. Hahaha. So anyway. Hahaha. Yep.
Brian Bashore (01:04:02.738)
It's just a good dude, right. Definitely has grown the exposure.
Brian Bashore (01:04:11.992)
Yeah, yeah, we had this out, Robert. He's going to, he's going to renegotiate his contract. Now he's going to be like, Hey, best pro, I need a little bit more money. Well, but at least they got him doing what he's doing. So.
Justin Sieverding (01:04:24.879)
Yeah, yeah, nope.
Brian Bashore (01:04:28.122)
over your career of this tournament fish and stuff, how you think you have evolved as an angler.
Justin Sieverding (01:04:35.395)
Well, I will say that I have definitely transitioned from being a guy who likes to crankbait fish and troll to now my number one thing is casting. And why is that over the last three and a half years? Forward facing sonar. I mean, it's, it is it's video game fishing. Like we're not out fishing schools of fish anymore. We're out sniping individual fish and it's so exciting to do. Like.
It doesn't matter how many times this happens. Anytime I put my trolling motor in the water or I am in the back of the boat and I put my finger pole over the side of the boat and active target returns a sonar return and there's fish there, you see those little blobs sitting up above. I like, I get all tingly. Like I can't even do anything anymore. It's like, I need to grab a rod. I can't even get the rod buckle undone. You know, it just like, I'm so excited about it and it doesn't just have to be glide baits, you know, if I'm casting a wall, I X kamikaze or I'm casting a.
a zoom super fluke or it's just a jig in a minnow or whatever that is. It's just such a fun way to fish because you get to watch the fish interact with your bait and you know, sometimes like I forget to set the hook because it's like, Oh man, he's chasing. And then I feel the hit and then I'm like, Oh man, he hit it. And I was like, ah, you know, and it's like nothing there. Yeah. So it's like, but it's just, it's so, and it's just going to get more and more wild. Right? Like the resolution.
Brian Bashore (01:05:55.616)
There's just a second part to this that I forgot it.
Justin Sieverding (01:06:05.659)
on these sonars is just increasing exponentially with each new generation. It's like in a couple of years, not only are you going to know, you know, what species of fish you're casting at, but you'll probably know within a half inch of how big that fish is, you know, and depending on how they're facing the transducer right now, you get a really good idea of it. But as you know, these little blobs and squiggly lines refine out to be higher definition.
it's just going to become, you know, more and more like, Oh, I just showed up to a point. That's a school of drum. I'm not even going to try those are like, Oh, man, there's three 25 inches laying right there, and then there's a 30, 10 feet away from them. So just that's kind of my evolution is I, I still love trolling crankbaits, like I hope the Lake Erie bite is a trolling bite and we're not casting at them because I do love big water trolling, whether it's crankbaits or spinners, but I, I just.
Brian Bashore (01:06:55.787)
and
Justin Sieverding (01:07:04.447)
I love that casting deal. It is so much fun.
Brian Bashore (01:07:08.866)
You know we're all gonna be trying it out there. We're all gonna be trying to pick that 30 inch or out of that school of 22s or whatever.
Justin Sieverding (01:07:10.795)
Oh, yeah. Oh, I. Oh, like this is no joke. Last week, I started rigging rods up for it. Like I might the front of my boat will look like, you know, porcupine, you know, because I'll have, you know, like we talked earlier, I'll have my rods with braid on it, fluorocarbon mono. And, you know, depending on the action that time, you do a probably a pretty slow deal. But then it's like, you know, what can you cast at them to get them to hit? Are you going to cast a soft plastic? You know, could we actually cast a jig in the middle?
out there to him. Can we cast a glide bait? You know, who knows? Yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:07:42.162)
in the middle of nowhere suspended, right? They might be five feet down in 30, 25, 30 foot of water.
Justin Sieverding (01:07:49.631)
You know, in 2020, yeah, 2020, a championship on in 2020, we were out of here on Ohio and it was in like September or October or something. I don't remember, but I remember being out there and like on the back of my boat, I had a live site transducer mounted. I still carry a live site transducer anywhere, but it kind of shoots out in front of the boat. This is before Active Target. And I could see those sea fish just barely under the surface. Right.
And I'd never even thought that time of year that these walleyes might be just a couple of feet under the surface. And so I was only letting 10 feet of line out on a, on a bandit walleye deep hooking my planer board to it and sending it out. And I just slaughtered them. Like I, like on day two, I had big bag and I was just like, Oh man, this is awesome. Cause everyone was like, how are you doing that? Like Chip Lear was still the guy. He's like, man, what are you doing? I was like, I tell you tomorrow, dude. So you're on date, you know, on day three, I'm like, Hey, yeah, I'm just catching them like.
Brian Bashore (01:08:32.95)
Yep.
Brian Bashore (01:08:43.599)
Exactly.
Justin Sieverding (01:08:47.515)
just right behind the board. And then Brett King and I were talking about it. He's like, man, today, this was on day three. It was really wavy. He's like, I looked beside my boat and I could see a walleye in the wave. And I was like, now that's my whole new deal. But like, to your point, like when we get out there in April, those fish, you could be in 40 feet of water and they might be two feet under the surface or they might be 30 feet down. You don't know, it's light, Keery, right? And that's that whole deal. Where are they chasing the bait at? So...
Brian Bashore (01:09:14.146)
No.
Brian Bashore (01:09:17.218)
They come up in sunbathe. That's warm water. I've been doing it for years out there. I've ran bottom bouncers with big blades and a slow death. And I have a 30-inch right here on my wall from here redoing that. But I was told, you can't catch those fish on the bottom. I dropped it out and went, yeah, I can. Tournament I didn't. I ran big bandits, but I also went really fast when they're told you can't go fast. Well, when you start figure eight and your outside rod is constantly going, your outside board's going down, hey, it's April. I'm going to go to something.
Justin Sieverding (01:09:18.767)
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's just crazy.
Justin Sieverding (01:09:29.019)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:09:47.006)
Then dropping your husky jerk or whatever it is, 20 feet behind the board with those fish, which you can't see them on your 2d because you spook them when you drive over them. Your cones narrow side image. So you can, you can pick that stuff up. You're paying attention to it. Now you got to pay attention when you're going slow because it doesn't work. You know, when you're cruising on a plane, which is nice now with our transducer, we can graph these fish at 30 miles an hour or even faster. Yeah, there's just going to be a lot of.
A lot of things mixed in on Erie, you know, but is it going to be the guy with four rods out or the guy with one? You know, and a coangular.
Justin Sieverding (01:10:17.691)
Yeah, well, and that's what we'll do. If you can land on the right pod, right? And it's, you know, those fish out there, you know, I've learned like, you know, you'll have the small fish and then sometimes the bigger fish will sit right underneath the smaller fish. And sometimes it's the opposite way, but you know, if you want to cast to them and you have to go through 10 feet of three pound fish to get down to five pound fish, you're never gonna catch a five pound fish, right? Cause that bait's just never, those fish out there are voracious, right? You're like, if you have a dozen,
Brian Bashore (01:10:37.788)
Right?
Brian Bashore (01:10:44.214)
Yeah, those little ones are real hungry.
Justin Sieverding (01:10:46.027)
Oh, if you have a dozen rods out, which, you know, like you have four guys in the boat, you can run three rods a guy like you'll have 12 fish on at a time. It's just a riot, but tournament fishing, it's not about, you know, bringing something in to put in Greece. You know, we want to put it in one of our milk carton racks that they give us now and, and get our fish weight. Right. So it's like, uh, but yeah, it'll be interesting to see, but like, if you could just land on one of those pods of big fish and just work that pod casting.
Brian Bashore (01:11:02.754)
Right? Right.
Justin Sieverding (01:11:15.171)
I mean, someone could just put us all to shame. And I, but yeah, we'll all be, we'll all be looking at it. And I hope that I'm the one doing that. We'll do another podcast efforts, but, but yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:11:18.122)
Yeah, I mean that would be fun.
Brian Bashore (01:11:23.426)
I hope I can figure it out. You know some of these new baits that came out might dial in well or your kamikazes and I mean I think you guys got a blade bait too right?
Justin Sieverding (01:11:33.727)
So we're working on some stuff, yeah, that will be coming out. We're hopefully going to be testing out there at Lake Erie. You know, there'll be a few of us, Brian, you know, I can't let everybody have it yet. So, but yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:11:37.954)
So you'll get, you're gonna have it, but.
Brian Bashore (01:11:43.57)
Yeah, right, right. That's a, that's fair enough. That's what you get when you're in the business. When you're making it, you get it first. You got to make sure it works. I mean, you got to, got to prototype test those things.
Justin Sieverding (01:11:51.92)
Yeah, well, we'll see, but it'll probably be one of those deals. It'll be like two in the afternoon and I'll be out there at the front of the boat casting. I'll be like, oh man, I only have three fish in the boat. And I'll be like, oh, I should just not done this all day. But yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:12:04.482)
Maybe I should have did this all day. Well, we've been banging on this for a while. If you could leave these anglers with one little nugget or tip to help them on their angling journey, what would it be?
Justin Sieverding (01:12:18.087)
I would say, I'm going to just because this is the new thing in fishing is forward facing sonar, go out and like number one, definitely buy it. Like it's an investment, but it will change the way you fish, but learn how to use it. Um, and, and don't, don't be like me and sit and try to make a fish bite, like move around a lot, um, and, and find different fish, you know, you'll get one school that's turned off.
You go a hundred yards in the next school, just be on a frenzy. And I sometimes forget that often. And last year that kicked my butt a little, but, um, my whole deal is just learn how to use forward-facing. So, like it, it'll just blow your mind. You'll learn so much about fish in such a short period of time that, um, just some of the preconceived notions we have about any species of fish are just not true, right? The stuff that was written 40 years ago, just, it doesn't apply anymore.
And the faster you can go learn that the off-the-wall things are the things that work day in and day out, more often than the standard bearers that we all go do, then the better.
Brian Bashore (01:13:31.702)
good advice don't do what I do right don't do what I do that's probably something I would have to say to don't do what I'm doing but do this you know type thing
Justin Sieverding (01:13:34.351)
Yeah, don't do what I do. Yep. So.
Yep, yep. So like I need to start listening to my own advice. So I'm probably gonna write that one down and just tape that to one of my graphs. Yep, yep, exactly, yep. Yep.
Brian Bashore (01:13:47.762)
Right. It's do as I say, not as I do or something. Put that right on my windshield sponsored by myself. You know, don't, don't do this. Awesome. This go fishing, put your, put your head down in a sense, but I, it drives me nuts because I want to be up and I want to take in while I'm out here to begin with, you know, but there's two days in that week where I'm going to have to be head down and I can enjoy all this later. So.
Justin Sieverding (01:13:56.303)
Yep. Just go fishing. Go fishing. Yep.
Justin Sieverding (01:14:13.595)
Yeah, you have to be. Yep. And hopefully with one of those trophies, yeah, so.
Brian Bashore (01:14:17.078)
But we're still out there. Right, right. You know, worst case scenario, or not worst case, but the minimum goal is a check. So that we can go to the next one. So mama lets us go.
Justin Sieverding (01:14:25.089)
Yeah, cool.
Justin Sieverding (01:14:28.699)
can explain to the wife why I'm going to Red Wing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:14:30.902)
Right. But that sure is expensive and you're not bringing much home. Like it's coming, it's coming. 10 years later, it's coming. It's, you know, you don't get a lot of wins in your lifetime sometimes, unless you're John or Dewey or Corey, you know, but it's all cyclic. It cycles. We, you know, it's, it's anybody's shot any day is the best part about tournament fishing, you know.
Justin Sieverding (01:14:43.995)
Yeah, yeah, over quarry, yeah, yeah.
Justin Sieverding (01:14:53.755)
That is 100% a fact. Like, you know, day one when we're listening to the morning prayer and then the national anthem, like, you're sitting there wanting that win, right? And that's why we're all there. So, and you never know when it's going to be your turn.
Brian Bashore (01:15:05.846)
That's why we do it, it's-
Nope. And you, uh, you can't win if you don't play. So these are facts people. These are the facts of fishing. It's all there is to it. So, all right, Justin. Yeah, it, uh, it is thanks for all your time today. That was awesome. This is good stuff. Uh, folks, you can, I'll put some links down below, go out, check out the wall. I X lures. Those are starting to pop in some stores, I think, and a few places. Where can they find them at? Is anywhere else out there just on your website?
Justin Sieverding (01:15:12.667)
That is a fact. Yep. Yeah. Yes. It's like Bill Dance. Yep.
Justin Sieverding (01:15:25.624)
Yeah, thanks, Brian. Appreciate it.
Justin Sieverding (01:15:34.107)
They are. So there's gonna be like a whole smattering of retail locations. You can get them this year, but like just one place we wanna check out some information like our social media, you know, Facebook Walleye Explorer Company, Instagram, or just walleyex.com.
Brian Bashore (01:15:50.134)
Alright, there you go. Heard it from the Walleye X-Man himself. If you need to get a Caymus boat, get hooked up with Justin as well. I think he's still in that market or...
Justin Sieverding (01:15:53.607)
There we go.
Justin Sieverding (01:15:58.447)
Yeah, so we, like my wife and I, I think it was like 2017, 2018, we invested into capital marine and sport at Fort Pierre. We sell Triton boats and Caymus boats. I've been fortunate, very fortunate to run a Caymus boat the last couple of years. I've had a couple of the very first production model on the 22 foot boat and the 20 foot. I think I'll probably have that 20 foot again this year. And I just love them things. Like they're just, they're battleships. So yeah, if you want one, look me up.
Brian Bashore (01:16:28.256)
It's a fast boat. I've seen him fly by me. Justin's always got the fastest boat out there. I've always seen him fly by me.
Justin Sieverding (01:16:32.72)
I spend a lot of time, you know, I gotta at least look flashy out there if you're not catching anything, right?
Brian Bashore (01:16:37.558)
I'm very skock we uh, and you had one of my buddies with your co-agular. I'm 10 miles ahead and it's 10 minutes later. There he goes. 10 minutes later. I can't even see him anymore. You're going 70 something.
Justin Sieverding (01:16:45.451)
Oh yeah, that's the Kakauia tournament. That boat would do like 77, but you know, you take everything out of the front compartments, you know, and it's like, and it's just rocket ship, but yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:16:53.315)
Alright.
Brian Bashore (01:16:57.074)
Yeah, I'm cruising at 56 and I'm like, he's kind of get like an hour more of fishing time than I am because he's cruising. Hey, I was done at noon though. So I'm okay. I didn't, I didn't need more time. It was that place is awesome. So, yeah, to you. All right. Oh yeah. That's my favorite. Love that place. So it'll be good. There's not a bad time of year to go there. So fishing is just, just awesome. Yep. That time of year, we should be good. You're going to be able to catch fish anywhere. Shouldn't have to go 90 miles, probably 50.
Justin Sieverding (01:17:01.051)
Now, just make that 400 work. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking forward to getting back up there too. So, yeah, yeah.
Justin Sieverding (01:17:16.015)
No, no, it's just how much gas are we going to burn? That's the only question.
Brian Bashore (01:17:26.638)
If you want to go hit the shell Island thing, but you can catch fish right at the launch too, and people have proven that every time we've been there. Yeah. Preferably. Cause it's not cheap getting fuel in the water never is. And they know we're coming.
Justin Sieverding (01:17:31.651)
It's nice when it's only one tank of gas.
Justin Sieverding (01:17:39.144)
No, especially if there's a line that's like, I'm the 10th boat there and it's like, it's gonna take me an hour just to get gas. So, yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:17:45.134)
Yep. I've fortunately always figured that system out well and I've gone to Kelly over Indian Hills and in and out of that place, but it's only 35 miles from Latchley. You don't need gas. If I get it there, I know I can go wide open there and conserve and be good to go the rest of the day and nobody else hardly stops there. Now I said that everybody's going to go there.
Justin Sieverding (01:18:02.735)
Well, that's why like I um, I went down to that the that deep camas dv-20 with that 300 Verado on the back and it's like 19.2 gallons an hour wide open throttle, you know, you're doing 65 miles an hour. So I got three hours at wide open throttle. Um, I can cover some water in a hurry. So like that's um, I it's a little less thirsty than those 400s.
Brian Bashore (01:18:20.2)
Yeah, that should...
Brian Bashore (01:18:26.366)
Yeah, yeah, you should be good. I got the pro excess for that reason. A mine doesn't get great fuel efficiency versus what I used to have in a Verado. But the motor's been good. No complaints, but maybe it's got one of those part of it was trim tabs were not installed a hundred percent properly. It was getting some drag. So I don't know. It's it is what it is. The things that suck fuel. He miles this throw dollar bills out the window or over the side. When you're going down the lake, just, it's just the way it is. It's cost of doing business. So
Justin Sieverding (01:18:44.01)
Oh, yep.
Justin Sieverding (01:18:51.356)
Yeah.
Justin Sieverding (01:18:54.671)
Yep, absolutely. Yep. Yeah.
Brian Bashore (01:18:55.166)
Anywho, we will see you on the water real soon. So thanks for tuning in folks. This episode of Real Talk Fishing was Mr. Justin Cverding, National Walleye Tour Pro with WalleyeX, Cayman's boats, you name it, serial entrepreneur. That's a good thing. By the way, for people who don't know that, that is a great thing. And you can find this podcast on Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Google, anywhere there's a podcast platform, basically right here on YouTube where you're watching it or on the Walleye Guys Facebook page. So check out the links below.
head over and give Justin a follow and stay follow along then and watch the tour unfold this season. We expect good things. So thanks for tuning in and we'll see you on the water.
Justin Sieverding (01:19:34.515)
Thanks.