Presented by Yamaha Motor Corp USA and Warrior Boats Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug. 28, 2024
Contact: Denny Fox, 920-505-0122
Anglers Insight Marketing LLC (AIM™)
Lake of the Woods Gives It Up For Maki, Bricko, Webers, With 200-Plus Pounds At AIM Minnesota Championship
What a weekend. The AIM Weekend Walleye Series Mercury Marine Minnesota Championship winners double-dipped, winning the Championship and Yamaha Motor Corp. USA Team Of The Year with 106 pounds and change, while the brothers Weber also scored with a two-day weight of 100-plus pounds to take second and earn a spot in the 2025 Warrior Boats National Championship Shootout on Lake of the Woods Friday and Saturday, Aug. 23 and 24.
“The teams we interviewed during pre-fishing predicted it, and the first- and second-place teams did it, with a combined 209.45 pounds of those beautiful Lake of the Woods walleye, and that first-place team of Dylan Maki and Joe Bricko, two you’ve heard from before especially this season, also took home that 9.9 Yamaha kicker and Yamaha Motor Corp USA Team Of The Year honors, and they and second-placers Mitch and Matt Weber both topped that century mark,” said Denny Fox, AIM national tournament director.
“That’s huge, considering Day Two was delayed for two and a half hours due to pea soup fog. Despite that, both these teams bested their Day One weights. And all those hawgs are back swimming where they were caught, thanks to AIM’s often-copied Catch-Record-Release™ format, which is an absolutely beautiful thing. You had to score more than 72 pounds to break the top 15 and 77 to be in the top 10. We promised you something special for this one and Fan Nation, and you got it.”
For winners Joe Bricko, from Woodbury, and Dylan Maki of Cohasset, it was all about teamwork, planning and especially on the first day, being selective, that got them to the finish with 106.24 pounds, winning $8,500, plus $1,150 in AIM Sidepot Challenge cash in their Mercury 400 Verado-powered boat, with Garmin LiveScope in the electronics.
“A few weeks prior, 28-inch fish were almost easy, and you were even passing on them,” Bricko said. But, he said, after one day of pre-fishing Sunday, they realized they were fishing a different lake, and finding the right ones might become a needle-and-haystack adventure.
“I started fishing on Sunday afternoon and decided I was either really missing something, or I was in the wrong area” that was supposed to hold winning fish but didn’t, Bricko said.
“I told our team, ‘this isn’t as easy as we thought, and buckle up, we’ve got some work to do.’ A lot had changed since those monster bags of tournaments prior where you needed all 30-inch fish. We all dug in as a team on Tuesday. We quickly found that getting even one 30 a day was a challenge, and the expectation was we’re going to have to have all 29s and 30s to even be in the mix. It left us feeling, ‘are we missing something glaring or has something changed,’” he said.
They spread out to, as Bricko said, uncover every rock to confirm one, or the other. “We were able to increase our average into that 28-inch caliber. It turned out we were on the right fish and the lake had just changed from that insanely good big fish bite. A lot of them scattered, I think, and I feel like some were no longer visible. They were just negative and electronics can’t pick them up. And, it’s such a massive body of water and it turns into a bit of a needle in a haystack.
“You had to be very selective at what you were throwing at and introduce more speed. Any increase in speed is more potential for coming across the right fish. Day One was calm, so using the wind didn’t play in. It was max power on the trolling motor and being selective,” he said.
They began pitching night crawlers on a selection of Northland jig sizes, using LiveScope to pick up the right size fish.
“The key on Day One was not getting stuck on little fish. You’ve got to be willing to pass them over. It’s a tough mental thing. The clock is always ticking in your head, and you get a little buck fever on Game Day. Once you get in the deer stand you see a buck and your mind says something it isn’t. You get to tournament day, and you want them to be big ones right away and you waste a lot of time. The lake is abundant with 24- to 25-inch fish, and they show up pretty big. But if you have a card of fish that size, you’re right in there on others, but with Lake of the Woods, 24s and 25s will never get you there. You’re willing them to get big, and they’re not big, and it’s hard to pass on them” he said, but if you want that win, that’s what you do.
“We had a 27-1/2 as the first fish we picked up within the first couple of minutes. I think it was 7:18 a.m. That had us feeling pretty good. We had our eyes set on anything 27 and greater. It happened fast on the first day. We were able to get 45 pounds on the card by 9 a.m. which left us in a good spot,” he recounted. Then they went hawg hunting.
“We made about a 10-mile run to an area called Knights and Bridges (North Bridges reef and Knights Island area),” he said, but any upgrading there? Nope.
“We caught a 26-1/2, trying to upgrade our 27, which was our smallest. We spent from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. trying to upgrade, then went for a Hail Mary, an area we only had a couple waypoints in. We put the trolling motor down and were lucky to come across and pop a 30 about 2 p.m., and then a 28-3/4 to put us north of 50 pounds,” he said.
They weighed 50.03 pounds, in fact, and were in the lead. Then came the fog and that two-hour delay on Day Two Saturday, and thoughts that go through anyone’s mind. What would that do to the fish? Two fewer hours to fill the card. Two fewer hours to find the right fish.
Their strategy changed: ensure a full card to pad their lead in Team of the Year points (more on that in a separate story). It was a short run to their spot once the fog lifted enough to make the single-file parade with the rest of the field for the first few miles out through the “gap” (that’s Lighthouse Gap from the Rainy River mouth that finally gets you into the main lake). And that strategizing paid off.
“An average size would probably seal TOY and that’s the most coveted. Our mindset was, just get fish on the card. We were netting 22-inch fish like it was the Bassmaster Classic. We were netting 23s like our life depended on it. We were feeling comfortable, then we went hawg hunting again,” he said. And as Bricko said, when things are going right, they’re going all right.
“And it happened fast. We upgraded our whole bag and didn’t have to take any of those smaller fish. We had a 31, a 30-3/4, a 28-1/2, a 29-3/4 and a 29-1/2. And we upgraded all that in just a couple hours. It takes an aligning of the stars, and we guessed right. We started both days in the same area, the south end. But on Day Two because we started later, we said let’s push out in hopes that the fish slid out.
“We got roughly 3/4 of a mile out and started seeing signs and came across our first, which was our clue they moved out deep. As walleyes do they come in early and take off later in the day, and we made the right decision,” Bricko said. “We moved fast and were super selective, looking for those 28-pluses. The majority came on night crawlers. We started in 26 to 28 feet and then our big fish were in 30 to 32 feet. We had multiple rods tied up with from 1/8-to a half-ounce jigs.”
Coming in 3.03 pounds behind the leaders in second were brothers Matt Weber from Pequot Lakes, MN, and Mitch, from Nowthen. They did their work in one of two 2090 Warrior Tillers they own, Mitch’s, with a Mercury 250 Pro XS aboard, along with Garmin LiveScope in their electronics.
That Warrior earned them an additional $500 in Warrior cash, plus $3,900 in second-place winnings, plus another $690 in the AIM Side Pot Challenge. Grand Total? How about $5,090, PLUS a golden ticket to the 2025 National Championship Shootout, at a lake to be named later.
“It was definitely a fun bite,” Mitch Weber said while driving home. During pre-fishing, Mitch Weber said they were “that much” away from their goal of finding the fish to go for it all to qualify for the AIM championship. All they needed, he said, was a couple of kickers, and they boated two personal best beasties on Day One that made it happen. This was only their second full season of fishing AIM and they did it on LOW mainly jigging and bobbering live bait.
“We actually found the fish Thursday morning. We got a good one, and then left them alone. On Day One we knew they were there. We had a second spot, but they were few and far between there. They were concentrated in one little area,” he said. Their Day One morning started with a couple of 24 and 25-inchers.
“Then stuff heated up for us. My brother had his personal best with a 31-3/4. We went not very far away, and I made a cast and got my personal best, a 30-1/2. Those two were the kicker fish we were looking for.
“About 12 noon we had I think 45 pounds. We knew we’d be sitting good but didn’t think that was enough. We went to our Plan B spot hoping to get one and they weren’t there. We spent about an hour-and-a-half, and we believed they were laying in the mud. We just couldn’t find them, so we came back to Plan A and ended up catching another, a 28-inch upgrading a 26, and we came back with 48 pounds and change,” he said. To be exact, 48.64.
“We knew we’d be in it going into Day Two. Chasing a few hammers in front of us, we knew we’d need a mid-50s bag. And the stars aligned,” he said. Going back to their first site, they ground it out all day this time, boating two 30-3/4-inch monsters, a 29-3/4, a 28-1/2 and a 27-1/2.
“It was the most fun me and my brother have had in the boat, by far. My brother would jig them and if they didn’t want it, we were corking them. If they didn’t bite, we’d move on. There were some little bite windows out there and we were in the right spots when they hit,” he said.
“AIM is a fun circuit and probably the toughest in the Midwest. The teams who fish this are just next level. And they’re all great fishermen. We knew it was going to take 100 pounds and only a couple of us did it. We’re happy for the winners. They had a heck of a year.”
This will be their first Shootout appearance. “We’re excited about it. That was our ultimate goal. We knew we needed a top five finish, and it came through. We’re anxiously awaiting the lake and looking forward to breaking down that body of water, wherever it is,” Weber said.
The other teams earning a spot in the National Championship Shootout by placing in the top five at the Minnesota Championship out of Wigwam Resort in Baudette are, finishing in third and winning $2,900 plus $460 in third-place Side Pot Challenge cash as well as $300 in Garmin Rewards for electronics, Tyler Wolden of Carlos, MN, and Nate Leininger of Miltona, with 93.40 pounds of walleye over the gunnels. Like the winners, they also double qualified by finishing second in TOY, so two other teams who finished high in points will be heading to the 2025 Championship Shootout in their place.
Fourth place was snagged by John McCabe of Boy River, and Tyler Malkowiak of St. Michael, with 86.15 pounds. Besides the Championship Shootout shot, they earned $2,200. Fifth place went to Brent Knutson and Shawna Erdmann of Bemidji for boating 83.38 pounds, good for $2,000.
Ok, next up be you, North Dakota, at the Championship on Devils Lake Sept. 6 and 7. The next Mississippi River qualifier for the AIM Rivers Division is Sept. 22 in Dubuque, and registration is still open. Get ready to sign up for 2025. Just go to aimfishing.com. Follow all the fun at AIM’s Facebook page.
You know you want to. You know you can.
Anglers Insight Marketing LLC (AIM™) is a unique tournament organization created and owned by many of the most accomplished and recognizable professional walleye anglers, along with others who share the mission of advancing competitive walleye fishing and making it sustainable into the future.
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