Angler Mark Nuss shows off his plaque for finishing fifth at the annual Wyoming Walleye Stampede In-State Championship Tournament last month.

Tribune photo by Don Cogger

Earlier this spring, local angler Mark Nuss was in the market for a new fishing partner to tackle the Wyoming Walleye Stampede, an annual series of fishing tournaments.

When an old fishing buddy recommended Lynn Stewart from Casper, Nuss was intrigued.

“My friend told me, ‘You two guys fish a lot alike, and I think you guys would do pretty good this year,’” Nuss recalled.

Stewart gave Nuss a call in late spring, explaining that his old fishing partner wouldn’t be able to fish with him over the summer. Would Nuss be interested in partnering up for the walleye tournament season, he asked?

“Two of the tournaments were at Glendo Reservoir, and one was at Pathfinder, so right away I said I’d fish with him, because that’s his [Stewart’s] home lake,” Nuss said. “He knows certain holes to get walleyes.”

It turned out to be a fortuitous partnership.

The Wyoming Walleye Stampede consists of three qualifying tournaments that routinely feature more than 100 two-man teams; after those three events, the top 50 anglers are invited to an In-State Championship. Nuss and Stewart not only made the cut, they went on to take fifth place.

A promising start

The season kicked off May 18-19 at Glendo. Among 105 teams, Stewart and Nuss took 16th place and earned $750.

“It was a promising start,” Nuss said.

Three weeks later found the pair back at Glendo for the second competition. Out of 110 teams, Nuss and Stewart placed 64th.

“We were kind of mad at ourselves, because we didn’t get the right walleyes to get into the top 20,” Nuss said.

The third tournament was scheduled for June 22-23 at Pathfinder. As the two anglers prepared, Stewart proposed a challenge: If the duo made the top 50, was Nuss good with continuing on to the state championship at the Seminoe Reservoir?

“I said, ‘Yes I am,’” Nuss recalled with a chuckle.

At Pathfinder, Nuss and Stewart exceeded their expectations, finishing 24th out of 98 teams. That put them 25th out of 110 teams in the overall Wyoming Walleye Stampede rankings — they had qualified for state.

The field for the Aug. 10-11 competition at Seminoe represented the best of the best walleye anglers in Wyoming and the surrounding area.

On a pre-tournament jaunt to Seminoe the Thursday before the start of the event, Nuss and Stewart caught 60 walleyes. A good day of fishing to be sure, but there was just one problem: “None of the fish we caught would have qualified for the tournament. They were all dinks,” Nuss said. “They had to be 17 inches to turn in for the tournament, and we didn’t catch any that were close to 17.”

The men caught another 55 fish on Friday, but “not one of them qualified, either,” Nuss recalled.

On Friday night, the eve of the tournament, Nuss and Stewart were “down in the dumps,” trying to strategize where the prize walleye were hiding.

“We were like, ‘Where do we gotta go to get keepers?’” Nuss said.

But things would take a turn for the better on Saturday morning.

“... We picked a shoreline and started putting in, and at 8:30 in the morning, my pole went down with a slow-death hook on a bottom bouncer,” he recalled. On the other end of Nuss’ line was a 22.5-inch walleye.

“I was shaking so bad, I couldn’t even get the hook out of it,” he said, laughing. “I told Lynn [Stewart] he had to take the hook out, and he said, ‘Why are you shaking so bad, Mark?’”

Nuss went on to hook two more walleyes that measured out to 17.25 inches each; later in the day, Stewart also got in on the fun, catching a 17.5 inch fish. Per contest rules, each team is allowed to turn in five fish per round, but as hard as they tried, Nuss and Stewart were unable to hook into that fifth keeper.

“We figured with our four fish, we were in 18th or 19th place,” Nuss said. “... But then we found out, per our weight, that we were in sixth place with four fish. We thought, ‘Holy cow, with a good day Sunday we could be in first or second.’”

On the second day of the tournament, Nuss hooked into a 17.5 incher shortly after 8 a.m. He and Stewart stayed in the area until 1:30 p.m trying to get more keepers, but to no avail. Stewart then suggested a different shoreline.

“I told Lynn I was game, because we were running out of time,” Nuss said. “We had to be in by 3 p.m., and we would have to leave the section we were at by 2:10 p.m. to get back to the check-in area.”

Stewart picked a rocky shoreline, and as the pair battled 35-40 mph winds, the boat began to drift toward the rocks. Not wanting to damage his boat, Stewart goosed the engine to create some space; as he did, his pole bent.

“Lynn set the hook, and pulled in a 22.5 inch walleye,” Nuss said. “So now we have a 17.5 and a 22.5, and we’re excited. We went down that shoreline and Lynn had his pole go down hard again. It was a nice one, but he missed him.”

Circling back to where he caught the 22.5 inch walleye, Stewart hooked into another keeper at 18 inches. With three large keepers in the live well, the duo sped back to the check-in station. After Nuss and Stewart weighed and released their fish, they retired to Stewart’s fifth-wheel to relax before the awards ceremony — which they thought began at 5 p.m.

“We thought maybe we’d finish 12th or 13th with only three keepers on Sunday,” Nuss said. “The awards assembly usually starts at 5 p.m. Well, nobody told us that this one started at 4 p.m. So we didn’t even show up until a quarter to 5 p.m. When we got there, they were loading all the stuff up into a trailer.”

After enduring some good-natured ribbing about being too good to attend the ceremony, Nuss and Stewart learned they’d finished fifth in the state championship.

“... we were amazed, because we only turned in seven fish,” Nuss said. “But everybody, some darn good walleye fishermen from Casper and Colorado, were having trouble finding the keepers. There were like 12 teams who zeroed both days because they just couldn’t catch anything over 17 inches.”

Nuss and Stewart walked away with $1,100 in prize money for their efforts which, when it all shook out, paid for the entry fees and groceries, with a little left over for each angler to put in their pockets.

Looking ahead to next year’s Wyoming Walleye Stampede, Nuss said he wouldn’t be surprised if he and Stewart partner up again.

“When I dropped Lynn’s boat off the Sunday night after the tournament and I was saying my goodbyes, I was shaking his hand and I said, ‘Thanks for the great summer. If you need a partner next summer to do this again, give me a call,’” Nuss said. “He said, ‘You can count on it.’”