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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!
Brian Bashore (00:03)
Welcome back to another episode of real talk fishing with no limits brought to by Segar high performance braids as well as seven reels, seven seas, seven continents, seven days a week, seven decades in the making built by anglers for anglers, seven reels. This episode, we're going to go talk to my good friend, captain Lance Valentine up in Michigan. Guy has got.
some forums, some, puts out fishing knowledge like crazy. We're going to talk about the walleye zone, the fish form, the app, the information hub that he has Detroit river fishing, second, all Bay fishing, you name it. And just a whole bunch of general fishy heads talking about fishy walleye stuff. It's going to get, he's a good one. Lance has got a lot of info and we're to put some links down here below on where you can go.
Follow Lance and the walleye zone and the fishing and the walleye 101 and all these platforms he's at and all the shows he's got going all over the place. Um, so you can learn a whole lot more about walleye, walleye behavior, walleye fishing, walleye tactics. And it doesn't matter where you're at in the country or what type of body of water you're fishing. There is information that Lance puts out there to help you catch more fish. So stay tuned as we go visit with captain Lance Valentine.
Brian Bashore (00:00)
Hey folks, thanks for tuning in for another episode of Real Talk Fishin' with No Limits. Today I'm going to go over and visit my good friend Captain Lance Valentine from the kind of the upper UP Detroit, Michigan area. The man knows a whole hell of a lot about walleye and has been out there educating wallanglers for years and years. And we're just going to dive in deep with Lance and let him kind of explain what he's got going on in the walleye world.
Captain Lance Valentine (00:23)
you
Brian Bashore (00:25)
And how you can find him and follow along in his walleye education journey here. So what's happening, my good buddy.
Captain Lance Valentine (00:31)
Not much, are in the middle of show season over here in Michigan. we're kind of wrapped up our big show in Detroit a couple of weeks ago. And now we're kind of into our nonstop six, seven week journey here. then now once that's where we get ready to go to Detroit River, we'll spend two months down to Detroit River guiding every day. But we're in the middle of the crappiest time of year, right? 28 days in February, but it seems like it lasts for 90.
You know, the weather's always crappy. We finally got our snow and our cold weather and I'm not happy about that. yeah, luckily I'm on the road getting to talk to a bunch of people about fishing. So that always makes it little easier for the time to pass. But just getting ready for springtime, man. Just like everybody else right now, just kind of got work to do to get to springtime, but can't wait to get there.
Brian Bashore (01:17)
The
cabin fevers, you know, it's settling in and punk, punk, systemic feel was correct. We are going to have six more weeks of winter. Cause it is brutal out there right now. think we're a lot of record lows through this whole kind of the great Plains and upper Midwest portion of, but it does look like a good break coming into, into winter here at the end of the month. And it's, it's the final push. You know, I'm waiting on my new boat to show up. You got a, there's a plethora. There's a boat show every weekend somewhere.
Captain Lance Valentine (01:20)
Kevin Feaver is real. Yeah, absolutely.
Brian Bashore (01:45)
You know, or sports show that everybody's going to, and I highly recommend everybody goes to these shows, get out, talk fish in, look at the, you know, the deals that are out there to get your trips booked. I've had quite a few bookings come in myself for the last few weeks. So, you know, it always, as soon as it warms up for like a day, the phones and emails start popping. So it's good. think it could be, it could be a good year. I don't know. We're to see what the economy does, but it, I don't know. I think it's promising, but.
Captain Lance Valentine (02:04)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (02:13)
We got a lot of ice on the river here. I'm sure you got plenty up there. it needs to go away and it can't go away fast enough.
Captain Lance Valentine (02:21)
Yeah, and you know, now we've got a lot of snow and that obviously the snow cover keeps that ice a little longer. It doesn't make it great for fishing, but it definitely insulates it and keeps it a little longer. you know, it does. The ice cover snow cover definitely affects how fish from Lake Erie come into the Detroit River. So that whole thing kind of changes. we're kind of for that, we're kind of normal here. So we'll kind of see how that affects it. But, you know, there's definitely a correlation between timing and quality of fish on Detroit River.
versus snow and ice cover. you never know, right? We're basically eight, six weeks away that's called from ice out here and what can happen to those in that six, seven a week. So who the heck knows what's going to happen.
Brian Bashore (03:03)
A lot can and a lot will most likely. So it's just the, it's just the nature of the beast. It's part of our business. We're so dependent, you know, restricted about the weather and weather dictate fish more than anything.
Captain Lance Valentine (03:14)
Rather.
Yeah, you we don't have a close season here on the Great Lakes, right? So, you know, I keep my boat in the slip in Detroit and there's years I've never get my boat in for second week in March. There's years I've had to wait until the middle of April. And so you book trips, you know, late March, you're kind of like, hope that we get a cold spell like this. You know, because I, you know, I don't have any place to put anybody and it's frustrating. like you said, part of the job. And I don't think anybody depends on weather any more than
us and farmers are really the only ones that weather affects as adversely the dust fishing guides. So, but once that little spring thing is over and we get rolling, we roll here until middle of December. So we just got to get that first little kickoff, that little start and we're ready to go.
Brian Bashore (04:04)
It won't be, it'll be here soon. It's it does suck, but it is coming soon. And in the meantime, people are sitting at home, they're freezing their butts off. They're watching bass fishing on TV. You know, they're waiting for the classic. That's why I know it's always tax time. Cause I'll sit down and put everything on the table. And for a couple of days, the whole weekend of the Bassmaster classic, it's like, I'm doing taxes. You know, I'm dreading the classic coming up into March. Hopefully they're done well before then this time. But, thank God with the use of QuickBooks nowadays and running everything through it, a little more organized would have come.
Captain Lance Valentine (04:22)
you
A little easier.
Brian Bashore (04:34)
tax time. but people, got a ton of things going on and there's resources out there. There's just place for people to go have these fishing talks and, and learn all this stuff in front of their computer and amongst their peers before they would get a line weight. Let's dive into some of that and everybody kind of what you got going on there.
Boop, we lost your volume.
Captain Lance Valentine (05:00)
You got me now?
Brian Bashore (05:01)
Nope.
If I can hear you, can't see you.
Captain Lance Valentine (05:06)
Hang on, let me read through it here. Got me? Okay, good. All right. So not too long ago, we started a new platform called The Walleye Zone. And we got tired of social media, right? Everybody that's a fisherman has posted a fishing picture and never commented on it. don't you keep that fish or I caught a bigger one or what? So we got tired of what we call the noise. There's so much noise on social media. So one of the guys that I work with,
Brian Bashore (05:07)
Yep, there you are. Yep.
Captain Lance Valentine (05:36)
found this place, it's called a community. And it's basically, it combines the best of social media, it combines the best of a place like Vimeo where you can store video, live events, live rooms, live streaming seminars, store all of our previous seminars and archive that guys can go get all in one place. So before we had people going different places to get different things and now we've got this community.
There's a place there called Open Discussion. just like Facebook. You can interact with all the other anglers there. We have all of our seminars, all of our blogs. We do live stuff every week. We do our member stuff. We have a membership club that we do hardcore stuff for them every month. That's all accessed through here. And we've got a ton of free stuff. I I think last time I looked between blogs, articles, mini seminars, and what we call courses that are a little bit longer, I think there's like 400 pieces of content there.
Um, so there's a lot of stuff to watch. guys can get there. It's the wall, the walleyesknown.com. And all we ask for is your email address, a few questions about fishing, get you on, get you free access. And there's so much stuff there to, uh, to bop around on and see. So, uh, it's been really, really popular. We're bringing guys on slowly. We have to, uh, we have to, unlike Facebook being just like a page, we have to physically touch everybody that comes in so we can tag them, figure out where they're from.
what kind of fishing they like to do, they would like to do. So now we have this ability to target you with, you say, hey, I want to fish Detroit River better. So next time we do a Detroit River event or a seminar or a blog, we let you know right away that there's more Detroit River stuff. So we have to touch everybody that comes in. So we're slowly building. We're trying to build about 30 to 40 people per week. That's enough for us to touch and get dialed in. So we're slowly dialing in how this works. We're really excited about the...
Excited about the capabilities of what this can do not having to worry about advertising on Facebook and I have to worry about You know how that is right some of the limit and when you're on social media We don't have any of that we have complete control over what we do Complete control over our guys nobody has access to any of their data So yeah, we're pretty excited pretty excited about it We kicked it off right after Thanksgiving with kind of a soft launch and getting ready for a hard launch here probably April 1st So yeah guys love love come over see if it's called the wall I zone comm
Brian Bashore (07:37)
yeah.
Captain Lance Valentine (07:59)
And again, I'll ask your email address, ask if you have questions, you're in and ready to go. And this time of year, there's nothing better to do than troll around and act like all ice stuff is a trap. So we've got a ton of content there. Love to have guys head over there.
Brian Bashore (08:12)
Yeah, this is hands down the best time of year to be diving in and just absorbing, absorbing. Cause there's never, you should never stop learning in this fishing world. There's so much a Lindy rigs, a Lindy rig, right? There's this much a jig is a jig type thing, but there's always a new one. There's a new way to present it. There's a new way to tie it. There's a new, whatever the case is. And then there's always new anglers where angling is growing. So there's new people coming in. So when you think you're being redundant and being like, you know, I've given this seminar a hundred times, there's 90 different people listening this time.
Captain Lance Valentine (08:41)
Yeah.
Brian Bashore (08:42)
Right. That are new that people forget
about. And so you always, I always kind of say, talk to kind of the lowest level. It's okay. Because most likely there's something new and I can go to your seminar. I said this to, you know, many anglers and like Scarless years ago, I'm like, I go to as many seminars as I personally can. I said, I can guarantee you. And whether I'm listening to a Lance or a back in the day, a Scarless or a Johnny candle, I'm going to learn something new. I'm going to pick up. It's just, if it's just one thing, that may be that one thing that made you go from.
Captain Lance Valentine (09:08)
whole thing.
Brian Bashore (09:12)
104th place to first place and that's a hundred thousand dollar difference sometimes so it's probably worth my time right and it's just year-round like-minded and good people so you know
Captain Lance Valentine (09:21)
I
think the hardest thing, I say this a lot to guys like you that are in the education business, we're communicating with anglers, the hardest thing to do is to get somebody, so if someone hops on the wall, just don't go, oh, he fishes Detroit River, he fishes Saginaw Bay, whatever. Okay, well, the things I do in Detroit River apply any place you're vertical jigging in current. I don't care if it's the Mississippi River or the Missouri River or the Keokuk River, I don't care.
Everything that we do in Detroit applies somehow to any time you're vertical jigging and heavy current. The way we troll in Saginaw Bay applies anywhere you're fishing those same. One of the things I learned is the term in Anger travel over the country is a walleye is a walleye is a walleye. If I don't have to catch them here in my reservoir that's 10 minutes from my house, I got a reservoir here that's 40 feet deep at the dam, a lot of flooded timber, a lot of shallow cover, a lot of rocks. If I see that same situation in Kansas, fish act exactly the same.
So the knowledge I have here transfers wherever. I don't have to be doing a seminar on your lake, about your county, about the spot you fish. If my spot that I fish is the same, has the same characteristics, the information we're giving you is exactly the same. So don't get caught up just while this guy doesn't fish where I fish. Yeah, I do. It's just called something different located differently, but I fish the same place you do. And that's one the things I think was important for me to learn when I started watching a lot of seminars is, you know, I can hear you talk about fishing.
the Mississippi River and I can apply something there to what I do in Detroit. I think that's the big thing that guys miss is they want everything specific to where they are instead of worrying the process and understanding the details. It doesn't matter where you learn those details from, can bring it back to your lake and catch more fish.
Brian Bashore (11:02)
fish the patterns, not the fish. Yeah. Cause they're usually able to mimic them, not just throughout that fishery, but throughout the country, seasonal migrations, weather temps and water temps are different, but the transition of spawning the post spa, you'll pre-spawn to spawn to post spawn to fall. It's still happening. It just happens at different times. And, theoretically it's usually in the same same locations.
Captain Lance Valentine (11:03)
Here's the patents, there you go.
Everywhere.
That's the thing, the spots they like, you know, we're doing a Detroit River school here at a show right this week in four hours on Carver Detroit River. We're talking about migration routes up and down the river and how those migration routes change from pre-spawn to spawn and then from spawn to post-spawn, right? How the edges are different and how flats become more relevant at post-spawn. And so all those little things, and those things apply. I don't care if you're fishing a river, you can jump across. Those same things apply at the same time.
uh, you know, that same post-bond transition, fish come off these real steep edges to get a little more gradual edges. have a tendency to move to the top of edges as opposed to the bottom of edges. All that happens no matter where you fish. And it's getting guides to understand that what you learn here can be applied over here. That's a, that's a hard, that's a hard, that's a hard thing to do because everybody looks at everybody as regional and that's not what you do. Good fishermen are good fishermen. If you understand what they're teaching you, there's a lot you can take to your body of water and catch more fish.
Brian Bashore (12:23)
Yeah. And the learning curve has obviously changed drastically for, you know, new anglers coming into it, which isn't a, which isn't a bad thing. It just makes them, you know, making people better. Anglers quicker because of the wall. I zone or the, you know, the wall. I want to want schools, the stuff you've been doing for years. Things, these podcasts, the YouTube, the live stream of tournaments, forward-facing zone are right. There's all these things that have evolved that made people learn quicker, but also part of that is they haven't learned.
A lot of the fundamentals, right? They went straight to catching versus hunting really.
Captain Lance Valentine (12:57)
Yes.
Yeah, understanding that process, we don't want, this is actually my 30th year of doing fishing education. This is actually year 30 for me. And one of the things I did when I started is I wanted to find a platform or a skeleton, if you will, that I could put everything into, right? Where does everything fit? And you go back to the olden fishing, right? F plus L plus P equals S, right? You understand the fish's nature. That leads you to the location. The location leads you to the right presentation and then
Obviously, it had almost up to success. So we took it a little bit further and we created what we call the eight steps. And the eight steps are be in the right location, know the depth of the fish, get your lure to the right depth, then get the right lure speed, lure size, lure shape, lure action, lure color. And if you work down that process in order, you're gonna catch fish, right? The right color is irrelevant, there's no fish to see it. The right size lure doesn't matter if it's the wrong depth, right? So we set those eight steps up when we first started and everything we teach slides into.
So when you see something on the water or your pre trip planning or you watch a tournament, it should fit somewhere. You can go, ah, that's where I need to pay attention to that piece of the puzzle. And to this day, 30 years later, just did a, uh, an event over in Rochester, New York. We're still teaching the eight steps, the guys who fish for 30 years because they don't understand the process, the process, the process, the process, the process, the process, right? And if you understand the process, you can take any set of conditions on anybody water.
anywhere you fish and get on some fish fairly quickly. guys want to get to the fishing part way, way, way too early, too early in their career, too early in their day, too early in a week long preparation for a tournament. You've to be in the right spot and you've got to find fish that we call them catchable fish, fish that want to bite. You can find all the fish you want, but they don't want to bite. And there's ways you can tell catchable fish or non-catchable fish. So I enjoy teaching that process a lot more than I say, Hey, me and Joe.
we're not fishing, use the blue repel over the weeds. mean, what do you learn, right? You don't learn anything. So we always focus on the process. Everything we teach is kind of with that in mind. And I think it makes a difference on quality. you look at you hit it right in the head and these guys have so much information now they can get catching quickly, but they don't know why. If you can't tell me why you're catching fish there, why you caught fish there today and tomorrow they're 50 yards away. You can't understand why.
wind, waste, current, whatever. If you can't understand that switch, then you're not an angler, you're someone who goes fishing. And there's a big difference. You have to understand those whys. The equipment we have today helps us catch more fish, but it should also help us understand those whys a whole lot better.
Brian Bashore (15:34)
They are one second or one element away from not catching anything at all because they don't know why. Wind change, light change, know, whatever it may be electronics shorted out. Then they just go, now what? If I knew why I was catching them, why are they here? I can mimic this anywhere on this body of water. Possibly MLF was a good example of there. There's been some format changes this season in the bass world with Ford facing so and on what's allowed and what's not.
Captain Lance Valentine (15:41)
Correct.
Brian Bashore (16:03)
And I mean, and it's really showed that first tournament when the guys use it, they were putting 80 pounds, you know, up and then without it, they had 20 some pounds, you know, but then it's come from the Harris chain of lakes where it was shallow water, Florida fish. And the guys were like, I don't, I don't need it. then theoretically they didn't need it, but an Angler on the final day was very conscious and just self-aware what was going on around them. we went, look at all these birds.
Fishing spotty and hit zero. He's in the final cut. So he's happy. I'm good. made it. I'm going to go fishing today. Have some fun. If I catch him, I catch him. If I don't, I don't, I'm already getting a check. I'm glad to be here. I'm to get good points rolls out and the guy ended up finishing like maybe third or fourth or something like that. but just saw birds dive bombing and just, and it was like, kind of marked it, drove around to get a little bit of idle time to kind of go check things out and then came back out for lines in and just put a clinic on for the first hour and got more fish.
Anybody and was leading it and he was just like, I mean, every cast, you know, and he's just going through him he's like, I saw the birds. Okay. Cause it tells me there's bait. I know that when this has happened, I know rattle traps, hell of a good bait to use. Cause I can fish it at any depth I want and any speed, you know, I'm a follow up with a chatter bait or a, or a minnow type style bait and just keep mixing it up. And a lot of times that bite only lasts for a few minutes. So this lasted for the whole period for him, but then he continued to not catch a fish for like three hours after that.
Captain Lance Valentine (17:02)
Right?
Brian Bashore (17:28)
And had go, but it wasn't a surprise to him. He capitalized on the opportunity, knew exactly why he was catching them. But that was that.
Captain Lance Valentine (17:36)
It's frustrating
to see good anglers. know, I am seeing the Michigan Walleye Tour and we've got a great group of anglers here in Michigan that fish at Circuit. We had a tournament last year up in Alpena, know, fishing the Great Lakes and very migratory fish, deep water. And these guys were live scoping. That's a whole other semester for another day, but they're using forward facing sonar and they're catching them. They put a pretty good herd on on the first day and they come back the second day and
Conditions change from day one to day two now. I've been fishing up there for 50 years. Well, not quite 50 45 years. So when I Went to bed that night and I woke up the next one. Like oh we got a problem, right? Here's what's gonna Here's what's gonna happen. So I'm talking to the crew before time like you know We're gonna see some changes today because this is gonna happen. Well, these guys came in now. They did catch their fish Second day they didn't win but they did catch another nice pass for fish. So I asked I goes hey
how long did it take you to realize what happened overnight and the change? goes, we didn't do it. always did. went back to where we were catching them. We put the forward facing down. We looked, we couldn't find them. We drove around for four hours till we found them. Whereas if you understand what those changes were, they would have been on fish instantly. They would have understand what that weather change did, where it repositioned those fish. Then they could have went there and caught them instead of just driving around looking for them. And as we put my hand like, man, you guys are catchers. not.
fishermen, right? There's a difference, right, between having those skills and just counting on electronics. And that's where, you know, it's kind of frustrating for me. I'd like more people to step back and learn the skills. Because if you do, and now you combine it with what we have electronics-wise, holy moly, right? Fishing's going to become a lot easier. But I think sometimes we forget, we just forget how important those foundational things are.
to learn and we have to go back and learn those things. matter how long we've been fishing, You learn something at the end of every year, I'm sure you've got a list of things, go, I never thought that would happen. Or there's something I've never seen before. Guys, I would just like them to just concentrate more on the process and then apply everything we've got now. I think they'd be a lot better anglers, more consistently and faster, get on fish a lot quicker.
Brian Bashore (19:32)
All right.
Yup.
Yeah, you're going to be able to break down a new body water faster. You're not going to be intimidated by going somewhere. You haven't been, uh, I mean, the guys all fish and top levels are, or they know all the fundamentals and they're doing it and they're catching them. can unplug all their electronics are going to go out and catch fish. Um, but that's not everybody. And you talk about the eight steps and it sounds like I think you rattled off color was the last. Which Mike couldn't agree more, but the first thing people ask is you know, as a guy is when you get in the boat is what color, what color I'm like, I don't, doesn't.
Captain Lance Valentine (20:15)
Okay.
Brian Bashore (20:19)
Don't worry about it. You know what color I know what color we've been doing it every day, you know, but Mike, well,
Captain Lance Valentine (20:19)
yeah.
Brian Bashore (20:25)
this was yesterday, but today I have this type of water or light conditions. We're going to, you know, we're going to switch it up or this, know, is typically a good color on this body of water, which may not mean nothing to the other other one. But I'm like, none of this matters unless there's fish to be caught. So first and foremost, if there's no fish there, it doesn't matter.
Captain Lance Valentine (20:36)
Correct.
Nothing matters until, right? Up in Rochester, you know, we did our sonar interpretation seminar and I have a slide from the Detroit River. And one of the things I do a lot in Detroit is I drive a lot, right? I don't necessarily, I very rarely do I stop and fish unless I see fish. Side scan is my number one tool there, right? Cause I'm looking 200 feet around, right? So I show the slide and I'm driving up the river and I've got three fish on the right side of my screen. They're all lined up. got three fish and true story.
Brian Bashore (20:59)
Well, me too.
Captain Lance Valentine (21:09)
and goes right back what you said. I looked at it and I slide over there, put a waypoint above those fish. I slide over there, we go through there. Literally in one pass, I got myself and four customers, we catch all three fish. Pop, pop, pop. Okay, well all of sudden everybody starts to slide over. I start up my motor and I take off. Well, an hour later, guy comes up to me he goes, hey, says, what were you doing down there? I what do mean? He well, I saw you catch three fish. He goes, we were over there for an hour, couldn't catch anything. There was only three over there.
There were literally three fish on the side scan. We went and caught them all. Like what's the point of staying? But his first thing when he comes up and goes, Hey, cause what were you guys using down there? I could get those fish to go. Like there were no fish to get to go. We took them with us. We took those. We took them with us. So I don't care what you have. I don't care what you put down there. There was nothing there to catch. And if you kind of see them kind of looking like, you know, what do you mean? Like you can't catch them if they're not there.
Brian Bashore (21:48)
Yeah, we got him.
Captain Lance Valentine (22:03)
And we do that a lot. We move a lot on Detroit River. We may fish 20, 30 spots in a morning to get our 24 fish. And, you know, it's pick one here, pick one there. It's pick two here, pick one there. Here's a pod that doesn't want to bite. And if I go through a pod once, they don't want to bite, I'm gone. Because springtime in Detroit River, there's fish you want to bite somewhere. I don't have time, not a time to mess around with fish you don't want to bite. So it's kind of funny to see people instantly admit you catch fish the first thing they ask is what are you using, right? And that has nothing to do with it. They don't ask.
how aggressive are you jigging, what size buy you're using, you're leaving the jig on the box. They don't ask any of the things that are important. They want to know what do you use them, which is great if you're selling stuff and they go buy crap they'll need, but it doesn't do anything to help you catch any more fish.
Brian Bashore (22:32)
out.
Right?
using a Lance Valentine jig with one of my plastics and here's the link to go get them folks. By the way I'm just dragging it on the bottom I'm just dragging it on the bottom you know maybe I need to leave in the rod holder today I don't know but those are the those are the more important things sometimes.
Captain Lance Valentine (22:51)
See? There you go. Just... I followed followed him by idea.
Whatever, right?
They just, you know, and it's frustrating. And again, that's that process, right? You know, am I in the right spot? Either fish here is my lure. You basically it comes down to two things. If you put the wrong lure, the wrong speed, the wrong size, wrong shape, wrong action, the wrong call, you do everything wrong presentation wise, which you put it in front of a fish it wants to bite, they'll bite it. Especially if they're grouped together. If you got 10, 12 fish together, one will bite it so the other 10 don't get it.
I don't care why they're on the hook, just get on the hook, right? And conversely, you can do everything right with presentation. You got the right speed for today, the right lure, the right size, right shape, action, the right color. You don't get in the right spot. It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. You're better off to be a really bad fisherman with completely wrong lure in the right place than you are to be a great fisherman with the perfect lure for today in the wrong place. The guys don't spend enough time worrying about where they're too quick to worry about the watch.
Brian Bashore (23:58)
There's in the Takasaki used to always say this to me. We traveled together for years. They're always biting somewhere. There's a fish somewhere on this system biting. We're just, baby, we're just not on that one right now. So let's keep moving. And I'm like, I agree. There's somebody's eating always somewhere.
Captain Lance Valentine (24:03)
Enough. Enough.
Oh, somewhere, right? You know, and then, you know, back to that, you know, the other thing I see a lot of guys do, let's kind of continue here is I'll see a guy fish maybe a 20 foot flat on the Detroit River and he'll, you know, he'll fish, you know, one of the best flats on the river. He'll fish at 20 feet. He won't catch anything. He'll move up river two miles and fish another 20 foot flat. I'm like, dude, the fish just told you they're not on 20 foot flats. Don't go fish four more.
Right? How many docks do you have to flip until you realize there's no fish on the docks? Right? It shouldn't take you long to start to eliminate big pieces of water. And that's what I learned my PWT days. That's what I learned from the guys that really good in pre-fishing is they were able to eliminate a lot of water really fast and get to the right types of water and then start breaking that down. So, you know, if you're trolling in 18 feet of water and you troll for an hour, I get this all the time. say, but,
You're out there with 15 guys told for an hour, never marked a fish. Well, that's 55 minutes too long. If you didn't mark a fish an hour, all right, you're there. You're there 55 minutes way too long. So I don't understand why people think they can catch them where they're not. I don't care how good you are. You gotta be where the fish are.
Brian Bashore (25:20)
Fishermen are their worst enemy. It's the memories. It's the, uh, I fished 55 minutes out here or eight trolled all these passes and I mark a fish for one. I, lure doesn't hit the water if I don't mark a fish. So you got to trust those electronics. And I mean, and they're pretty much take them out the box, turn them on. They're pretty well dialed in. I mean, it's, know, it's, it's kind of hard not to get it. A lot of people don't understand what there's, you know, what they're reading, you know, but here you are, go to the wall. I zone, go to these forums, go on YouTube.
Captain Lance Valentine (25:39)
Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, you can find something.
Brian Bashore (25:49)
The information is there for you to become an absolute guru of this stuff before you get out there and just eliminate time. Yes, there's times where you, got to fish to find the fish cause they're so shallow, I'm with you. Side images, get rid of my 2d, whatever. don't care. can craft fish in two feet of water on my side image. They're not earning the boat, you know, but they're out there.
Captain Lance Valentine (25:50)
Learn, learn that.
Give me where I fish, give me side imaging, give me GPS and I'll be all right. The Detroit River is a great example. It's not going to be pretty much this way too, but fish will get on very distinct lines. They'll get on very, very distinct lines. If you miss it by a boat with, you're not going to catch anything. They will get on very distinct lines usually associated with a bottom composition change. We get that a lot on saying, we'll get fish suspended 10 feet down over 30 feet of water over hard bottom soft bottom.
transitions. you know that GPS is you know I say to this day save a waypoint every time I catch a fish and you start to see these lines start to develop and you start to see that today these fish have split out a little bit. Now you take that you put it on top of mapping and go oh these fish are on steep drop-offs today. Well now you just eliminate a whole bunch of river or lake that isn't a steep drop-off and you go okay now they're 20 to 25 feet of water okay now I've just limited a whole bunch of water. Now my
I got 32 miles of Detroit River, 32 miles and say about a mile wide. I've got 32 miles of river to fish. I just broke it down to about 30 stretches that are 100, 150 yards long. I'm going to catch more fish than you because I'm always fishing where the fish are. And one of the things I know, I talk to a lot of guys. I'm a big talker, you know that. And Detroit River most days from the top of the river to the bottom. So Lake St. Clair comes in at the top. It makes a 45 degree angle at the Ambassador Bridge about halfway down the river and then
if he's out into Lake Erie. I talked to 10 or 15 charter captains after every trip. If it was 20, 25 feet of water where I was in the middle of river, it was almost always 20, 25 feet of water at the top. And the best fishing was 20, 25 feet water at the bottom. Once you figure out, and I don't know if that's sunlight penetrating. I don't know what that is, but man, if I can hear three or four people tell me, hey, we're killing them in 24, we're killing them in 24. Why am I fishing an eight? Right? So getting information and understanding what you're actually seeing is a big part of that process of
Brian Bashore (27:53)
Alright.
Yep.
Captain Lance Valentine (28:06)
thinking properly on the water. And I think the biggest thing for me that I learned, again, I learned this term because it was eliminating big gobs of water just by fishing one spot. I think that's huge because again, that just makes everything smaller. And the faster I can get to the good spots, the more fish I make.
Brian Bashore (28:25)
Pay attention to the little things, but pay attention. I kind of just pride myself on this in tournaments and is your surroundings. What's going on around you, right? Detroit river, a lot of boats, you know, community holes and people are rolling in there. just, put it in and they go straight there. There's 20, 30 boats. There's no better indication of people of a good bite or not than zero nets popping up. I'm like, okay, there's where it's just where everybody at. I'm like, yeah, this is where everybody's at. That's not catching fish.
Captain Lance Valentine (28:48)
Bingo.
I'm serious.
Brian Bashore (28:55)
So it's very simple. That's where side image. And I see it all the time. And I get it. If you don't know where you're going, you've never been there. You're to be like, all right, there's a couple, three guys I'm going to roll over there and just kind of start. And maybe they're on them. They're not. And I have that happen as a, you know, as a guide and you know how it is, you get followed around them and I I'll see a big pod of people and I'm like, Oh, they're, they're from Iowa. They're not local. They don't know. And I'll drive by and all the sites. I'm like, maybe they stumbled into something, but all sites can be like,
There's not a single thing in there. was just, there was a boat there early in the morning, which turned into another boat and another boat. And I'm like, there's four guys who aren't going to catch fish all day long, you know, until they recognize it. And then they all pull up, start following you wherever you're going. But I'm like, you got to pay attention to what's going on around you. And then don't forget those fish move, right? It's 24, 25 feet. You're on them, you're digging them. And now that sun is going down or whatever the case is, and also the bite slowing down, it's getting slower and slower and slower.
Captain Lance Valentine (29:21)
Nothing there?
Brian Bashore (29:50)
The fish split up, right? That now they're in 18 feet or one of the cases just be cognizant of, were crushing these fish and now we're not, you know, they didn't just, all of them just disappear. didn't catch them all. Sometimes you did when you went over three fish, you made a pass, you caught three fish and that was that. But you know, it's paying attention. Your surroundings is huge.
Captain Lance Valentine (30:10)
Yeah, well.
One of the things that I say a lot, I don't like to say always or never when I'm talking about fishing because the fish will put me wrong, right? So I said, but one thing I'm 100 % sure of is bad fishermen don't like to fish alone. You always have a tendency to see a lot of bad fishermen in the same spot. That's what you said, right? There's one guy, oh, let's go over there. Now there's two guys that catch them. Now there's 40 guys that catch them, but they're all together, so everybody's happy, right? So.
Brian Bashore (30:27)
Right.
Yeah. Hey,
they get all sit there and they bitch about not catching them together. I've heard that plenty of the fall cause it's dead silent and quiet and guys like, it sucks. And he's yelling at other guy, this horrible way, catching crap. I'm like, I'm leaving because you guys just all told me it's no good.
Captain Lance Valentine (30:40)
Yeah.
I've been
here for an hour, haven't marked any fish and I haven't seen a net. Well then why have you been there for an hour? That's funny.
Brian Bashore (30:54)
Yup. Pay attention to what's going on. It's,
I need more cough drops. Sorry folks. I coughing and coughing, getting over this, this winter funk that's passing through everywhere. Uh, I am seeing the MWT event still, right?
Captain Lance Valentine (31:02)
But.
Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, that's really fun.
Brian Bashore (31:17)
And that's a, I mean, that's a hell of a little circuit they got there. And I wouldn't, it's not a little circuit, it's a big circuit.
Captain Lance Valentine (31:22)
Yeah, 150 boats in Detroit and 120 everywhere else just because of capacity of some of the launches. Excuse me, it's really, really good anglers. Really good anglers. Some guys who stepped out of our circuit and went up and competed both at the MWC and the NWT level and done well. We've got a couple of NWT winners that are fishing. We got a couple of old PWT guys, a couple of PWT winners that have fished a couple of terms with us the last couple of years. But yeah, really cool to see.
this group really developed and we've got some great fisheries here in Michigan. We've kind of expanded where we're going. So like the Alpina Bight, right? The Alpina, the Ascota area. Guys don't know that's on the east side of Michigan, know, about three quarters of the way up on the west shore of Lake Huron. And it's open water, right? It's quick access, 80, 100, 120, it used to be a salmon, steelhead, open water fishery.
Brian Bashore (32:13)
Very open.
Captain Lance Valentine (32:20)
and now it's become a walleye fishery and watching these guys dissect these big pieces of water very, very quickly and understand how these fish move. You we had a tournament in El Pino last year and there were guys fishing literally two miles from the launch, catching big baskets and eight feet of water over the weeds and guys that were 48 miles one way, 50 miles one way, you know, out in 80 feet of water, jigging up walleyes 60 feet down. So the complexity of where these guys fish is
Other than the Detroit River, they're fishing some really cool bodies of water and they're figuring it out fairly fast. It's a good group of guys. It's really fun for me to be part of that again. miss, that's the only thing I really miss about turn fishing is hanging out with the guys and everybody doing what we do when we're on the road. So I get a chance to be part of that group. A lot of those guys have known me for a long time, so they know I've done this. And I know them and I kind of get the chance to watch them come up.
And obviously the Michigan Wallet Tour, without the Michigan Wallet Tour, I'm probably not here. I'm probably still working at the bank. That was where I got my start and got some credibility and got going. So I enjoy it. I love it. Five tournaments a year, four tournaments and a championship. Really cool places we go to here in Michigan and get to watch some of the best anglers in the state compete and figure it out. And guys know that I'm not going to say anything. So I get a lot of inside information as the tournament's going on.
My head gets filled with lot of really cool stuff. So I've become a better anchor just watching, listening to these guys and seeing how they kind of handle situations. yeah, it's really, really, I'm honored to be asked. I was honored to be asked four years ago when they first reached out. Big, big honor to be asked to do it. I love every minute of it. Absolutely love every minute of doing it.
Brian Bashore (34:04)
I always have told
that to people for years that if just you want to become a better Angler or beat fish tournaments, tournaments will make win or lose. You're going to learn a ton, you know, and just go into a weigh-in and just ask, yes, while I guys suck, you know, for, you know, communicating a lot of information, but there's typically good reason for that, but not all of them. You know, you come ask me at it after any tournament, I'll do everything. I'm hell, I might even give a GPS cord. That's got to live there. I'm not coming back for a while. Probably. Right.
Captain Lance Valentine (34:10)
Yeah, no question.
I'm like, I'm with that for a while.
Brian Bashore (34:32)
But it's also our job as the OS pros to educate that public and to sell those products and tell you what's working and what's not working out. Take all that with a grain of salt. Cause sometimes you're being sold something that wasn't at all what was being used. So.
Captain Lance Valentine (34:43)
Right. Yeah. You know,
I feel like because number one, you know, I've done this before. Number two, it's by far that I usually have fish. I work really hard to ask the right questions, right? Day one, I don't say too much. I might talk about, hey, weather coming in tomorrow. You got an idea of what you're to do. Day two, though, I don't want the guys to do, I don't want get off stage without asking them questions. Any questions that I want to know is an anger, right? Okay, how did you adjust to this or?
Did the weather make it harder for your presentation? Or you switch presentations today, why did you do that? So I try to ask these guys and gals, I shouldn't say it, we have a lot of female anglers. So I try to ask the anglers the questions I want to know as a fisherman to get better. What can I learn from these anglers? I try to ask those questions on stage and I don't let them get off stage until they answer me. So the Wayans are live in Michigan Walleye Tour Facebook page. So can see those are Saturdays and Sundays.
They start at three o'clock and it's really cool to watch these good, good, good anglers adjust to the different conditions they have to adjust to. and again, being part of it is cool. know, the guys have kind of accepted me as part of the group. I'm not fishing. I'm not really on the, you know, they'd ask me to be the tournament director a couple of times. Don't want that job. I like my job. I like what I do. I get to go up there. I get to talk, which I love to do. I get to, I get to relay information from the anglers to the crowd.
Brian Bashore (36:01)
Alright, that's a...
Captain Lance Valentine (36:10)
I get to give the anglers their props. I know most of the anglers that fish. I try not to let them get too cocky when they do well, and I try not to let them get too down when they don't. There's an art to that as the MC of knowing how hard these guys work, knowing how hard they work, and being somebody like you who's put three, four, five, six, seven days into just blood, sweat, and tears, and then you just have a bad first day. I know what that feels like.
Brian Bashore (36:24)
Yeah, there is.
Captain Lance Valentine (36:37)
I 100 % know that they come in that basket with one fish. You're like, oh, I know how that feels. I also know how it feels to bring a big basket in and have a great day. So being able to have lived that and being able to kind of make sure that those guys leave the stage feeling good about what they did that day. I think that's a little part of what I do. I hope that's why the guys like it. But I love doing it. I love being part of the tournament scene. I don't want to ever fish in our tournament again, but I love being part of the tournament scene.
And this is just a great group of anglers and a great club, same as one club that puts it on. It's a great group of people. So if anybody's in Michigan or thinking of turn fishing, come on over.
Brian Bashore (37:10)
Yeah, that goes,
But a good MC can make and break a whole term in organization real quick, especially with the live streaming and the watching or television and stuff and having that separate, obviously from the director to the MC is pretty crucial because MC can get all the love, but the director gets all the hate always. that's a, hate to have that job as well. Those guys just don't get enough credit sometimes.
Captain Lance Valentine (37:20)
Yeah.
And I
don't think you can do both jobs because we had a situation a couple years ago, early on Sunday we had a scale issue. a couple of the anglers, I've seen so many baskets of fish, right? And I probably won more money guessing how big fish, the weight of a fish or the weight of a basket, but I never won tournament fishing, right? So we started to see these baskets, first two or three guys, I'm like, uh-oh, these aren't right. And the guys looking at me, I'm like, just hang onto your fish and go back there.
Brian Bashore (37:37)
Not effectively.
Captain Lance Valentine (38:01)
wait for a minute. And it got to the point where like, okay, we have a problem with the scale. I saw enough difference. I thought enough different baskets to know that we were not getting as high a weights as we should be getting. And now the tournament director has to handle that. So I'm on stage, I spent 15 minutes talking about the event and what we were doing, where the guys were fishing and some techniques to think about while they're getting all this fixed. If I'm the tournament director, that live stream goes dead.
Brian Bashore (38:16)
All right.
Dead, yep.
Captain Lance Valentine (38:28)
And there's no time to do it. yeah, it's two different jobs. We have a great term and director. We've had great term and directors. We got a new one this year. But being the MC is really cool.
Brian Bashore (38:42)
Yeah, unfortunately, NWT Jeff Kelham is stuck in both those rules and we've expressed our concerns with that. it's, not his fault. It's just the way that it business is organized. And, but it's like said, if there's a, there's an issue, it's hard to address it without leaving a blank screen and, and he will. And that's exactly what happens is I got to go off stage and go handle this, or I'm going to handle it all after the fact. But according to rules, there's timelines and that doesn't really work very well either.
Captain Lance Valentine (39:07)
It's too late. Too late.
Well, hey, you ever need an MC, I know a guy, so... Yeah.
Brian Bashore (39:14)
Yeah, yeah, we all know a few guys, so that's good. Good on you. talk about Saginaw Bay a bit and here on
sounds like the fishing is getting better. I know it's been years since we were at Saginaw Bay, but I've only been there once and I would gladly go back again. It's a long drive, but that's fine. Cause I could tell I'm like, this fishery is good. The wind and weather up there sucks because of the way that system lays out, but you have the river and I mean the bay itself, but you had deep water. got open water. got weeds, rocks, boulders, river.
Just the way the system laid out, like, this is, it seems to be like it was coming back. seemed really healthy. There was a lot of fish. it, it's just the trend. still moving that way.
Captain Lance Valentine (39:51)
Yeah, it's, you know, I, yes, I, you know, I got up
there all summer. So I'm usually up there the first week of June through end of August. And it's, you know, our limit up there because at one time we had a lot of small fish. Natural recruitment is off the charts. We have a, we have a all time high population right now. And natural recruitment is just off the charts right now. So we went from five fish at 15 inches was, that's our traditional Michigan limit is five fish, 15 inches.
Stagon All Bay is eight fish at 13 inches. Now, we don't catch a lot of 13 to 14 inch fish, but I guide on the band on 26 foot tri-tune. so I usually have six people in the boat. And it's not uncommon to in that five hours dock to dock to get your 48 fish that are 16 to 24 inches. That's a very common occurrence. 25, 30 fish is, I would tell you that's kind of where we are.
every time we leave the dock unless the weather goes to crap or the water gets really dirty. So the fishery is amazing and there's a lot of good fish, a lot of fish in that two to five pound range. I fish the inner bay out of Linwood, so I fish the lower part of the bay, but as you move further north, the water gets a little bit deeper and the fishing changes a little bit. And what we're seeing is we're starting to get natural recruitment up in places like Tawas, up in places like Oscoda, up in places like El Pino. We've never really had natural recruitment before.
we're starting to get natural recruitment up there and those fish are getting bigger. So the inner bay is kind of those one and a half to four pound fish. Every once in while you get a five, six, seven pounder occasionally at the right time. Everything works right. But if you want bigger fish, like I do a slide north, know, agre and north, then kind of work your way east a little bit out in the water. And there's all kinds of six, seven, eight pound fish. mean, 40, 45 pound baskets aren't uncommon for five fish when we start to fish agre, taos, ascota, alpina.
that 38 to 42 pound number is very, doable. And really honestly expected when we go to those parts. So tons of fish, great recruitment, above average growth, very, very healthy fish. And the thing that bothers me is now you get these many fish, how does the baitfish population suffer? We've got more baitfish than I've ever seen. We have have have smells starting to come back. We're getting a little bit of allies back. We have four four Shiner hatches this year. We had four.
Brian Bashore (42:07)
Really.
Captain Lance Valentine (42:16)
Edmell Channer Hatches this year and that kept a lot of fish in the inner bay closer to me. we've got our day in eight second. If you've never been here, get here because you know, it's not uncommon for us in a day to fish five, six feet of water pulling cranberries over shallow weeds heading out to 10, 12 feet of water, maybe pulling cranberries on the bottom on rocks, then moving out to 20, 25 feet of water and total leadcore, two or three colors of leadcore with spoons as the day winds down. So you may do three different things over the course of the day and catch fish doing all three of them.
Very, very diverse fishery. you obviously want to come and cast, that's easy to do. Very, very diverse fishery. Lots of fish and pretty easy fishing right now.
Brian Bashore (42:54)
And clean, that is the cleanest water when you get north. What's the island up there again? charity Island. I would not hesitate one bit to just drop a glass down in there and drink the water right out of that. mean, I remember looking like I can see I got a seven pounder on it. I'm drawing a hundred feet of light out and I could see it, you know, and it's still 20 some feet deep.
Captain Lance Valentine (42:56)
Yeah.
Security islands, yeah, get north of the security. Yep, yep, yep.
Oh yeah, I had a guy last year,
we weren't off the effort. were in Augray. were so south of just little south of islands. We were out about 42 feet of water. And I let my charter guys do everything they want to do. Right? So I'll do as much work as they want. If they want to do all the work they can have at it. And we were out there. We had four or five days where we no wind. was just crystal clear. And his buddy's got this good size fish on six, six and a half pound fish. And the guy goes to that, he goes, go ahead and net it. And he goes to the nest and he goes like that. He missed it because the fish was six.
He just scooped up the top. know you got to go down there and get them. You got to go down and get them now. Because you can see that far down and not just, oh, there's a wall. mean, it looks like they're right next to you. So yeah, you could get fooled by that clear water sometimes out there. It does create some different fishing, right? We're starting to move boards a lot further to the boats, away from the boats. Lead corn steel is a big deal where we fish now. Not necessarily to get...
Brian Bashore (43:42)
Way down
Yep.
yeah.
Captain Lance Valentine (44:12)
baits deep, you can get the baits down where you need to get them, but we're getting smaller baits. We're starting to see smaller baits, especially in summer, becoming a lot better than bigger baits. So we're fishing a lot, I don't have anything here, but we're fishing a lot, like number five, number five flicker shads is a great bait. Number five flicker minnows, those types of baits have become really popular. So to get a number five down, you know, 15, 18 feet, you need three colors of lead, right? So, and that lead just stretches everything back behind the boat. So now that clear water doesn't become.
such a big deal. yeah, it's really fun. My summertime is fun on that pontoon. lot of people bring their kids. I got a lot of grandparents bringing their grandkids, which is really neat. You can let the little kids run. They're not tucked in a boat. They can move around a little bit. They've got a place to sit. Most of usually take a nap by the time we're halfway through. They're safe inside the rails. You don't have worry about them bouncing all over the place. And I can get, you know, my normal spread with six people, but we're a three-rod state.
My normal spread is 16 rods, right? Seven offshore boards on each side and a downrod on each side. So we've got 16 lures in the water. It can go from calm to chaos. It's pretty quick out there. We've got 16 rods going.
Brian Bashore (45:20)
chaos big time. Yeah. I run like four, no matter what, maybe five rods. That's it. One of my guys read the Ranger pontoon this
last year and I spent a little time with him on it I'm like, yeah, I can see one of these in the, future for the guidance, you know, men, it's just, it's just so much more room and comfy and just the way I fish. like, I don't think it'll work, but he does a lot of the same. like, it's working just fine.
Captain Lance Valentine (45:37)
Yeah.
Yeah, they ride so good, right? You know, guys, you know, the comment I get a lot is doesn't get blown off course. Okay, stop and think for a minute. Let's set up six traffic cones and you've got to weave it out of those cones. Do that on bicycle. That's fairly easy to do. Add a third wheel, create a tricycle and try to turn that tricycle in that same. It's really hard to do with that third wheel. And that's what a tritone does. I basically my boat basically has three 28 foot heels on it. It's very hard to turn.
Brian Bashore (45:47)
Yeah.
Captain Lance Valentine (46:13)
I can quarter into waves, pretty good sized waves, quarter into them with my autopilot and never come off course all day. Whereas a regular boat, you'd constantly be going side to side or you'd need to put a bag out. And I don't get the pitch that you get on a regular boat. don't get this because I've got such a long base, you know, it just kind of goes short. And running the waves, you get two, three foot waves, I would rather be in a pontoon than any other boat I've ever been in. Any turn boat I've ever been on, I'd rather be in a pontoon. So I can get on top.
I'm up on top of those waves kind of sliding through them. Everybody else is kind of going into them. So lot of advantages, they're fun. We see a lot of them. There's 300, I think 310 slips at the marina I'm at. And I think there's probably a hundred pontoons. Angraquest trytunes up there. A lot of guides fishing out of them now. So yeah, just a really cool, really cool safe plat. They're not the fastest boats in the world, but for fishing they're amazing.
Brian Bashore (47:08)
That's right.
Yeah, you don't need the speed of tournament tournament boat. You're to have something different. Obviously that rainy fish is tournament. It's out of his pond too, but they're local. And he's not going anywhere. going to with five, 10 mile type deal. Uh, and, they still, he's got a 200 horse on that. Try to, and he's the thing looks like it's going to go like this. I mean, he's cruising down the lake and I'm just like, it looks like you're going to catch it. This flip over because it's out of the water, but, he's only going to maybe 35, 40, but.
Captain Lance Valentine (47:35)
Yeah, I've
got 200 Suzuki on mine and myself and six customers. Just a normal day on site, I'll be a little bit of a chop. I can run 34, 35, but I'm not sure how much faster you need to go, right? mean.
Brian Bashore (47:49)
No, you
don't. In the gases, you're just throwing dollar bills out. So let's just cruise. Yeah.
Captain Lance Valentine (47:52)
That's nothing. yeah. Yeah, I'm just taking
our time and yeah, so yeah, saying I'll be in, you know, obviously if anybody wants to come over all they do is send us an email and more and happy to help anybody with anything. And if you haven't been to Sagan Al Bay, now's the time to come fishing. It's not a trophy fishery right now, but it's an amazing fishery with a lot of really, really good fish.
Brian Bashore (48:15)
Yeah, I can definitely, it's been a while since I've been there, but I keep saying, let's go back. And I know the NMT is going to here on this year and they had the championship up that way and I'm not going there. But I'm like, if we were just to sag and all Bay tournament, be a little bit more prone to go there. Cause I like that area. when you, you mix in that whole deal, you're talking, that's a, that's a pretty large, very large system. A lot of water, a lot of clean water, lot of deep water.
Captain Lance Valentine (48:27)
Yeah.
A of And like you said, you can get
a rock, right? You can make it 30, 35 mile run in the morning and be OK. And all of sudden, next you know at noon, you ain't getting back. And there is no place to go in between. You got to get back.
Brian Bashore (48:50)
Yeah, not a lot of cover or shelter, mean, second, I'll base a bay, but there's like coves and stuff to get out of, out of things like you have up here on the Missouri river or most of Kakawea. But so Detroit river season is literally weeks away from kicking off. What, what's the go-to? What should people know? They need to contact you. Obviously you can get them out there, get them on it. You got a ton of resources. You have all the workshops or the, I mean, what you call them on the wall. I zone the knowledge, educational circus courses. All right.
Captain Lance Valentine (48:52)
you
nope, nope, nine close.
horses, all kinds of stuff. Yep.
So the Tern River, I, you know, I do two trips a day every day from basically the last weekend of March until Memorial Day weekend. So I'm there every day. it is, it is, I think one of the funnest fisheries to fish. I fished all over, right? And it's one of the funnest fisheries. If you do anything close to right, you're probably going to handle 20 to 25 fish in a five, six hour day. If you pay any attention at all.
I vertical jig, guys are starting to cast now, guys are starting to throw crankbaits now. I vertical jig, right? 3 1⁄4 ounce jigs in the front, ounce jigs in the back. We built a new ounce and a half jig this year, because if you fish vertical, you know that sometimes the boat just drifts weird. You have the one guy who just can't find the bottom, right? When I started down there, tournament fishing was 3 1⁄8 ounce jigs. Now we're fishing, I fish a 3 1⁄4 to keep the boat vertical. Everybody else fishes an ounce. Well, I said, usually I have one guy who needs an ounce and a half.
But we still catch, we catch fish in seven feet of water and it's going have jigs where it will jig in, right? These fish aren't, they're not scared. There's a ton of them there. You know, about 15 to 20 million come in from Lake Erie. Plus you got the resident fish that are there. Obviously fishing changes depth wise over the course of the season and the day, but there are so many fish there. It's not even funny. Lots of really good launches. Just a fantastic fishery.
Most guys come too early. had to anybody a piece of advice, you're going to come to Detroit. Most guys come too early. Obviously you've got a little window where you catch, you got a chance to catch really, really big fish. That's usually April 10th to April 20th. That's kind of the range with the focus on wherever the new moon is full of loom falls inside that window. You know, and that's 40 years of data telling you that. April 10th, April 20th. But if you want good fishing, if you want to fish in fairly good weather,
Not a lot of people on the river, less people than normal on the river and catch 40, 50, two to eight pound walleye a day come in May. Come in May, second, third, second, third week of May is unbelievable. There are days I fish, I lost right in the middle of river. I fished the bottom part of the river. As the season goes on, there's fish coming in and out of Lake Erie down at that end. It takes me longer most days to run the 15 miles down and the 15 miles back. Some days it takes me longer to make those two runs back and forth than it does to catch my 24 fish.
Fishing is amazing in May. You get there second, third week of May, fourth week of May in the Memorial Day. It's not uncommon for four guys in a boat, three guys in boat who really know what they're doing in five, six hours before lunch, handle a hundred walleyes. And I don't mean walleyes, I mean two to six pound walleyes. Good legit walleyes. So yeah, so if you're gonna come, don't get all caught up in the trophy thing because the trophy thing, as you know, the trophy thing counts on so many factors you can't control.
Brian Bashore (51:56)
Wallace.
Captain Lance Valentine (52:09)
you watercolor gets bad, the wind gets bad, the watercolor goes dirty. Those fish are still spawned, but you ain't catching them. By the time early May sets in, the weather's settled in, the water's gotten warmer, the fish are mostly post spawn. We still do have some pre spawn. We caught a 12 and a half pound pre spawn fish last year on May 17th. So there are still good sized pre spawn fish in the river that time of year. But that once that post spawn sets in and those fish are there, they stay for.
Brian Bashore (52:15)
Yep.
Captain Lance Valentine (52:38)
three, four, five weeks and they are very easy to catch, very hungry, very aggressive. In big pods, you find one, you're gonna find a bunch and they're pretty simple to catch.
Brian Bashore (52:47)
Yeah, that March, you could really hit some cold water and dirty cold and dirty water. And there could not be a worse combination. Yeah.
Captain Lance Valentine (52:54)
You're not going to catch in, right?
So my guys that tell me they want to catch a big one, call them, you know, late March, first couple days of April, almost always, I just want to catch a big one. And my caveat is I'm not promising you anything. I'm going to promise. That's what you want to do. That's what we're going to Don't tell me 11 o'clock and we quit and knew that. Well, hey, had this didn't work. Let's go catch a bunch of fish. That ain't going to happen. If we're going to do that, that's what we're going to do. And I'm okay doing that. I will take you to the best spots I know and put you in the best opportunity to catch a big one.
Brian Bashore (53:08)
Right.
Captain Lance Valentine (53:24)
But don't expect me to save your trip at 1130 if that's what we're going to do in the morning, right? So yeah, guys that travel to Detroit, would say the biggest mistake they make, they come too early. Wait until third week of April and later the fish is gonna be a whole lot better. Whole lot better.
Brian Bashore (53:43)
We experienced
that when the NWT was there a few years ago in the March and it couldn't have hit it any worse.
Captain Lance Valentine (53:47)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't, the problem is the earlier you come in the cold in the water is the less bad things it takes to the fish off. Those fish get into a post spawn and they're hungry. There's a bunch of them. They may turn off for half a day, but they're back the next morning and rolling. And so, it's so, but I do, if guys are interested in coming, hop over to the wall. I don't, do a live fishing report every night at nine o'clock. I hop on my truck. head back to my.
Brian Bashore (53:56)
Yep. And we had all those.
Captain Lance Valentine (54:16)
house that I rent and I do a live fishing report every night at nine o'clock. Here's what I did, here's what worked, here's what didn't work, here's where I fished, here's how deep I fished, here's what I caught. Look, there's enough fish there, everybody can catch them. So if you're coming to the Detroit River, get on the walleye zone and pop in. We've got a little section that's just, I think it's everything Detroit and we do fishing reports every single night. We'll start, I think this year, March 28th, we'll start.
Every day we do a fishing report at nine o'clock at night of everything I did that day. So there's no reason for you to ever come to Tray River and not be prepared and know what's going on because look, I don't I'm not going to sugarcoat. I'm not going to hide anything from you. This is what we did. Come over here and have fun. I love watching guys next to me catch fish. I absolutely, absolutely get a kick out of it, right? So I'm OK. And if you know how to control your boat, we can all fish together. You know, we can fish within a rod length of each other.
Brian Bashore (55:13)
If you know how.
Captain Lance Valentine (55:15)
If you know how to control your boat, we can all fish together. We all catch, we all talk and have a good time. yeah,
Brian Bashore (55:16)
If you know how we can all get along.
Captain Lance Valentine (55:22)
so yeah, no reason to come to Detroit and not, if you've never been, hop on the Wally's Zone. We have a paid course, it's called Detroit River. It's called the Ultimate Detroit River Course. And it's four hours of information. That's what I'm doing live this weekend at Outdoor Ammo. But we talk about how fish come in the river, how they migrate, different spots. So everything you need to be successful is all there.
in that course. if you need to turn in your information, reach out, send us an email, we'd more than happy to get you dialed in.
Brian Bashore (55:50)
And there you go folks. If you go to Detroit and you suck, it is on you. It is your own fault. Lance has given you all the tools head over to the wall. I zone, check it out. It's all there. It's on you. If you don't take it in and learn from it. So, uh, we've been on here for a little while. Let's wrap this up. Let's, uh, leave all these guys with another nugget. One special little thing you can think of to, uh, besides joining the wall, I zone to help them on their, on their angling journey.
Captain Lance Valentine (56:19)
I would say I'm going go back to something we talked about earlier. Learn your electronics and understand that being in the right place is so much more important than what you got. I would tell guys this, you have enough fishing stuff, stop. Stop. You have enough. Just stop. Take the time to learn how to read your electronics. Understand what game fish look like versus bait fish. Understand what feeding fish look like versus
resting fish and don't put a lure in the water until you know a fish is going to see it. The wrong lure in front of a fish is a lot better than the right lure in front of no fish. Spend more time on the wire and stop worrying about the wire. The wire will figure itself out if you're in the right wire. Worry about the wire before you worry about the wire. Do that this year. Focus on not putting a lure in the water until you know there's fish that are going to be there to see it. I promise you're going to catch more fish.
Brian Bashore (57:13)
you couldn't set it any better. You can't catch them if they're not there and you can't catch them on the couch folks. So get a little Captain Lance call. If you're headed to Detroit or Saginaw Bay area, he was get you on some fish and check out the wall. I zone.com. We'll drop some, a link below and follow along on their social pages. Last work and everybody else find you. know you got quite a few little pages out there.
Captain Lance Valentine (57:16)
There you go, manny!
Yeah, walleye101.com is kind of our last page website. So on walleye101.com, there's a link to the Walleye Zone, there's a link to our store, a link to my charter site, and then Teach and Fish, and right now, that's gonna change here in a second, but actually I'm gonna send you here. The Walleye 101 Educational Forum on Facebook is a place to find all of our stuff. So the Walleye 101 Educational Forum, find that on Facebook, we're pretty active there, we share a lot of our stuff in the Walleye Zone over there with links to go get it.
But that's where we kind of interact with all of our anglers, answer questions and take care of any business guys need. And look, you've known me for a long time. I am always available to answer fishing questions. I know a lot of guys say that this is my life. This is how I make my living. I get up every morning. have one goal. That's to make somebody else a better fisherman that day. So don't ever hesitate to reach out. Email is the best. Well, I want to one at gmail.com. Don't ever hesitate to reach out and say, I got a question. I got a problem. I'm coming over here.
always always willing to help another anger that's that's one of the things I'm so lucky to do every single day so we should have me on we share a lot of your a lot of your podcast with our group at the wall is a lot of you guys love what you guys do and appreciate the invite to be on.
Brian Bashore (58:47)
You bet. that's what makes Lance the class act and why he's on here folks. Cause he is sharing info and there's not a lot of guys like that out there anymore. So we thank you a ton buddy and keep that up. And, I hope to get up there sooner than later and, maybe get up there. Even this late this spring and shoot some video or something on Detroit river. love to go there and not have to deal with ice built up on my boat for four days straight. Like last time. it might be a little more fun as horrible as that tournament was. was like, I still can't wait to come back.
Captain Lance Valentine (59:12)
There you go, yeah.
Now come in May, come in May, call me and come in May.
Brian Bashore (59:17)
You know, was, yeah, yeah. Yeah. May, unfortunately may
is just when everything gets going really good down here, over here to Dakota as well. And you know how it is as a guide, we don't, we don't get to go fun fish. I mean, we fund fish every day in a sense, but we don't, it's like, what do you, know, when you do it, you're not guiding. I'm on, you're on the water looking for the next bite for the next day, or if things change or, or coming up with new techniques and new ways, it's just, it's what you do, right? We fish every day, trying to figure it out so that the client and the customer can have a good experience the following day.
Captain Lance Valentine (59:23)
I know.
Brian Bashore (59:46)
Cause we're going to have tough days. mean, that's just the way it is. yeah, unfortunately it happened. So, all right. Well, thank you a ton Lance. And I thank all you for tuning in. We'll put a bunch of links below so you can go follow Lance and get hooked up and check out the walleye zone and stay informed and, all great things, Detroit river, Lake Erie, Saginaw Bay, Lake Sinclair, the whole area up there. It's a fishing just phenomenon going on. jump in, like you said, and now's the time get up there and take advantage of all that. So.
Captain Lance Valentine (59:49)
It happens. It happens.
Brian Bashore (1:00:16)
Alrighty folks, stay safe and we will see you out there on the water.