Presented by Yamaha Motor Corp USA and Warrior Boats Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Oct. 9, 2024
Contact: Denny Fox, 920-505-0122
Anglers Insight Marketing LLC (AIM™)
Okada, Hendrickson Take Final AWWS Rivers Division Open Friday In Prelude To Division Championship The Next Day
In the busiest AIM Weekend Walleye Series three-day period in its 10-year history, Joe Okada and Jake Hendrickson led off the fun on Friday (Oct. 4) with a win at the final 2024 Rivers Division Open Qualifier on the Mississippi River at Hastings, MN., teeing them up to also take fourth place in the two-day division championship that was on the river starting Saturday (Oct. 5) just downstream at Hager City, WI, while also stacking up enough points to take second in the Yamaha Motor Corp. USA division Team Of The Year race.
“That, Fan Nation, is what I call one busy weekend and one heck of a way to button up a season,” said Denny Fox, AIM national tournament director. “Because they finished second in TOY, it meant other teams have a guaranteed spot at the 2025 Warrior Boats National Championship Shootout. We’ve never had a season or a division finish like this in our 10 years on the water, and Okada can tell you how they kicked off this weekend with that win.”
Okada, from Cambridge, WI, and Hendrickson, from Prior Lake, MN, concentrated on Pool 2 for this qualifier, Okada said. Okada said he knew he had a couple of advantages. First, his boat had a new Yamaha 350 4.3 liter four-stroke.
“A lot of times in these river tournaments, it’s a boat race, and this year I’ve got the fastest boat I’ve ever had, so we were able to get to key starting spots first to set the tone,” he said.
The second advantage was his partner for this tournament. Hendrickson knows the river there.
“The way this worked out for my partner on Friday, Jake called me to fish that tournament right when Denny released the schedule. We weren’t going to do the whole series. Then Galen (Galen Bremmer of Avoca, WI who with Okada finished fourth at the two-day division championship) called me and said, do you want to fish the rest. We figured we’d do the whole season then,” Okada recalled. “So with Jake being my substitute for the Hastings Pools 2 and 3 qualifier, it gave Galen a day to practice for the championship. He eliminated a lot of water on Pool 4.”
“I spent the least amount of time on 3 than any other. We found low water, low flow and limited numbers of really juicy current-driven spots. It was almost like fishing a lake and that means fish don’t concentrate as tightly on sweet spots. They spread out and even suspend or meander. The big fish are really hard to pattern. There is a real reliable class of 18- to 21-inch fish and you hope to get a kicker,” he said, and considering some of the best local River Rats were fishing the championship, that pushed them to try Pool 2.
“Jake lives on Pool 2 and based on what I and he saw we thought we could pick up a couple of key bites there,” Okada said. They headed there and quickly filled their card with five decent, but not winner, winner fish.
“On Jake’s first cast he caught a 21-3/4, and the next four were 18- to 19-1/2inchers. We relied on Jake’s knowledge of that pool since he spent such a considerable amount of time learning it,” he said. “At least then we had five, and with AIM you’re not handcuffed. You just keep catching them and you pick your best five to weigh.” They only spent 10 or so minutes at each wing dam.
“It was thanks to Jake’s knowledge of the pool to milk the dams for all they were worth,” he added. Then, like Newcomb and Brantner, the eventual division Championship winners, experienced, when something goes wrong, it sometimes is right.
“We spent the rest of the day hopscotching to spots using a mix of hair jigs, cranks, plastics and night crawlers. Then we ran back down to the lock toward the end of the day. There was a barge that took its sweet time to clear, so we ran back upriver and during that last half-hour managed to catch two big upgrades, a 22 and 24.75-inch, to barely give us the win,” Okada said.
They eked out the qualifier win with 25 pounds even, besting second-place team of Joe Newcomb and Kyle Brantner, both from Pepin, WI, on the river, by less than a pound.
“Brantner is so good, I would consider him one of the best river fishermen out there and to squeak one out on him was rewarding. Almost every river tournament has been won by someone who always finds 30 pounds somewhere. Every time. It blows my mind how good these River Rats are. And if it wasn’t for that barge taking its time, I would have locked down early,” and they would have missed the fish that won it.
Finishing in second with 24.11 pounds and picking up $1,250 plus first-place Side Pot Challenge cash of $550 were the eventual Rivers Division Championship and Yamaha Motor Corp. USA Team Of The Year winners, Joe Newcomb and Kyle Brantner. If—if—they had won Friday, they would have swept the weekend.
“Friday we stayed in Pool 3. I’ve never been up on 2 and have been on 3 a little,” Newcomb said. And when they got to their first spot, it was uh-oh time.
“We went to our starting spot and there was nothing,” he said. Then, they went contrarian.
“We caught fish on one dam in particular. It wasn’t one that should have been good. So we started fishing stuff that wasn’t supposed to be good. We caught fish on all plastics and custom crankbaits, Rapala DT 6s, kind of a firetiger pattern. We were trying to cast them the length of the dams. We caught our two biggest on a crankbait. The 24-inch came relatively early like maybe 9 a.m., and the last one was a 26-1/4 later in the afternoon,” Newcomb said.
“After we caught that we ran up close to the launch to make sure we made it back. We caught a few on a jig and crawler, 21 or 22-inchers. Everything we had on the card at the end of the day was over 20. We jumped around quite a bit.
“We hit 15 dams on Friday, we went most of the way down Pool 3, maybe 15 miles downriver. We started off the bottom end and worked our way back north. The farthest down was our better spot, but it didn’t pay off at all. Most of our fish came within three miles of Diamond Bluff. We had one come unbuttoned that would have done it, but that’s just fishing,” Newcomb said.
Here are the rest of the top five in Friday’s qualifier. Finishing in third with 23.24 pounds, winning them $850 were Tucker Hanson of Pine Island, MN, and Braydon Moller of Silver Lake, MN. Fourth place and $400 went to Chance Zimpel of Boscobel, WI and Kyle Lund of Soldiers Grove, WI. They landed and released 22.46 pounds of walleye. They also took second place in the Side Pot Challenge for $330. In fifth place were Mike Schommer Jr. and his father Mike, both of Prescott, WI, who came in with 17.64 pounds, and 3rd place in the sidepot challenge of $220.
Go to aimfishing.com for information on how sign up for the 2025 season. The dates and locations, which could change, are at AIM’s Facebook page.
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AIM Presenting Sponsors: Yamaha Motor Corporation U.S.A. and Warrior Boats inc.
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