Presented by Yamaha Motor Corp USA and Warrior Boats Inc.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Aug 14, 2024
Contact: Denny Fox, 920-505-0122
Anglers Insight Marketing LLC (AIM™)
Ristow, Hertz Put The Hurt On Lake Sak At AWWS Last
North Dakota 2024 Qualifier, Winning By Nearly 4 Pounds
It was said last week that the Warrior Boats Pure Powersports Open on Lake Sakakawea’s Van Hook Arm may be won in Van Hook Arm out of Parshall, Sunday, (Aug. 11), and Matt Ristow and partner Kyle Hertz did just that, taking the final North Dakota qualifier of 2024 by nearly four pounds, leading up to the State Championship Sept. 6 and 7 on Devils Lake.
“They did it big, too, bringing in a card of 36.37 pounds and earning $3,500, plus valuable points in the Yamaha Corp. USA Team Of The Year battle,” said Denny Fox, AIM national tournament director. “The pair did it, let’s just say, not far from the launch point at Parshall, showing that often, anglers just drive right by the fish they should be trying for.”
Ristow and Hertz, both from Bismarck, had a plan, Ristow said, and that was to put some points distance between them and other teams in the running for Yamaha Team Of The Year (TOY).
“We had one really bad tournament which we will throw out, so we knew we had to make up ground. Our plan was to put a points gap on some people if we could,” he said. They started during pre-fish, which for Ristow began the Sunday prior.
“The weather wasn’t the greatest so you get limited on where you can fish. A guy can get anywhere, but it’s just how far you want to push it,” he said, and that day, he decided to not push it very far in his Mercury 350 Verado-powered boat with every sonar maker aboard including Garmin LiveScope.
He wandered into some of the creek arms that flow into Van Hook. And there’s where he found the pattern that won: a lot of young-of-the-year bait, and with them, walleye.
“As the week went on, if you come up north towards Van Hook it’s a narrower part of the lake where you can hide out of the wind, past independence point. I pulled in and nosed around there with LiveScope and wouldn’t you know it there was a bunch of big fish right near a boulder pile. Eater-size fish were hanging out deeper. They weren’t real active, but I did notice a bunch of young white bass in those.”
Tuesday, he ran to a different spot, looking for the same thing and sure enough, the same set-up was there, young bait fish, and large walleye waiting. “It seemed to be I found that anywhere I looked. Bait and the same caliber of fish. As the week went on, I had that in more places than I would have ever imagined,” he said. Problem was, they were “lazy,” and many were unwilling to bite. So many like that, Ristow said, he was questioning whether he was looking at walleye or not.
Instead of going bigger bait, he went smaller, downsizing to a 1/8-ounce jig with three-inch plastic minnows. “I’d have to hang it over the fish where they would rise up and barely suck it in. I went from catching one in 50 I saw to where I was picking off pods of fish. I started to feel really good,” he said. Saturday it was the same.
“Everything had just set up the same way. The same conditions. It didn’t matter if it was steep breaks or sand or rocks. If we could find the biomass, everything was mashed together. We were finding pods of 25 and 26-inch fish just sitting there, from 15 to 35 feet of water,” he said. And on Game Day, the pods may have moved a bit, but they were still there.
“Our first one was the 28-incher. We fished our first spot area up to like 2:05 p.m., and we ran to spot two, and searched and found another pod of fish. We were working on them trying to get them to go and happened to catch one on our chub rod at 2:45. That was the 26-1/2,” he said. It was on what many anglers would call their “dead stick.”
“We were just moving around, and we’d hang creek chubs off the side, and that’s how we caught it. That always seems to put one fish on the card for us at least,” he said. They ended up adding a 25-3/4, and two 25-inchers. “Sometimes the fish would come up to those and hit that chub. They wouldn’t bite it, they’d stun it and stare at it and most of the time they wouldn’t eat it. It was an interesting day to watch fish behavior, to say the least.”
Despite knowing their approximate weight, they weren’t sure whether they’d done well enough.
“We didn’t know, depending on the guys who fish Shell Island. Everybody at the morning went south. If they get them on shell, they really can get’em, but I figured we had a good shot at it. Our goal was to have at least 35 pounds, but we were really pushing to get north of 40. The other goal was to beat the Shell Island catch. We’ve never fished it. The right fish were there, but they were a real bearcat to catch,” he said.
They didn’t make 40, but they did go home with the win and those TOY points.
“That should move us up a good bit. We were sitting in 10th so it should move us into the top five, I’m pretty sure,” said Ristow, who’s now thinking Devils Lake and the state championship.
“I won at Devils Lake in I think 2017. I haven’t been back there but it’s always a good time. The bite I’m expecting to be set up there should be happening,” he said.
The second-place team of Dylan Martell and Thomas Leintz, both of Hazen, are both AIM semi-rookies, this being their first full season. They boated 32.57 pounds and $2,000 also fishing Van Hook in a Warrior 2090 Tiller, powered by a 250 Mercury Pro XS, with Garmin LiveScope among the electronics. Next time, he assured, he’ll be registered with Warrior so he can be eligible for Warrior Cash incentives.
“Pre-fish was okay. We caught a lot of 18- to 22-inchers, which wasn’t going to do it,” Martell said, but on Saturday afternoon, they stumbled onto some pockets of fish that had been blown between islands in the Arm’s northern end, a mile north of Shell Island. They planned to set up there Sunday.
“They were still there. They were actually a little shallower and more spread out. We just had to move around and pick them off with LiveScope. We alternated between ¼-ounce jigs and a crawler, a jig and a creek chub and any type of glide bait. We cycled through those,” he said. And no, they never tried Shell itself.
“We never actually even fished it in practice. It’s so hit or miss. One day it could be on fire and the next five, you could hardly get a bite,” he described. But on that saddle, they also “beat” Shell Island.
“Right away my partner caught a 26-1/2 within the first half-hour on a crawler and a jig. We had a little lull and about 10:30 caught a 19 on a jig and creek chub, and lost one in the same group of fish, at least a 28-incher. We caught our 29 on the next cast. A 20 and 22 came before another 26-incher.
“It seemed like in the morning they wanted everything super slow, even on the bottom, but as the day progressed, one fish would come up off the bottom and the next you’d have to lay it in front of them to get it to bite, and a lot of them didn’t. We casted at probably 150 fish,” Martell said. And that one that came unbuttoned, he said, could have boosted them into the lead, if, if, it was a walleye. He’ll never know.
“We should jump up a little in points. We were sitting in fourth. The first in Bismarck we got third. Lake Audubon, we didn’t do great. At Garrison, we were in 8th, and then this one,” he said, and he’s aiming to do well at the State Championship Sept. 6 and 7.
Rounding out the top five were, in third place, winning $1,500 for 29.30 pounds, Cullen Irey and Lucas Butts of Bismarck. Fourth place and $1,200 went to Luke Streifel and Kaden Schafer of Bismarck for landing 28.94 pounds. In fifth, earning $750, plus $650 in first-place Side Pot Challenge cash were Jeremy Berg of Minot and Jake Heilman of Garrison, with 27.42 pounds.
Second-place Side Pot Challenge cash of $290 went to Rufus Hostetler and Daniel Miller, while third place cash of $260 went Lonnie Jacobs and Matt Lang.
Ok, Fan Nation, on we go! The next AIM event on the docket is the Minnesota State Championship, Aug. 23-24 out of Wigwam Resort on Lake of the Woods. The NoDak Championship is on Devils Lake Sept. 6 and 7.
Rivers Division, your next Mississippi River is Sept. 22 in Dubuque. There’s still time to get in. Just go to aimfishing.com. Follow all the fun Sunday from Lake Sak at AIM’s Facebook page.
You know you want to. You know you can.
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