Lake Leelanau attracted one of the best walleye anglers in the nation, and didn’t disappoint.
Brandon Witkowski, who recently learned that he had qualified for the National Walleye Tour for the third time, teamed up with his father, Tom, to win the Lake Leelanau Narrows Resort Walleye Tournament Sunday, Aug. 15.
The event, which attracted eight two-person teams, was held Aug. 15 in ideal conditions for a day on the beach — hot, calm and sunny.
That’s usually not the type of day to fish.
“Fish were pretty lockjaw,” recalled Greg Alsip, himself a fishing guide on Lake Leelanau. “The wind kicked up a bit in the afternoon. People were using live crawlers, casting and jigging.”
Alsip and his fishing buddy, Cal Stier, landed four keeper walleyes that weighed 15 pounds, 10 ounces. They also landed the biggest walleye, a 27-incher that tipped the scale at 6.7 pounds.’
But it was the Witkowski's who won the day with the maximum five fish that had a combined weight of an even 20 pounds. Father Tom resides on Lake Leelanau; Brandon and his family live in Saginaw.
Placing third was the team of Tim O’Neil and Matt Mahar with five fish weighing 8.1 pounds.
The top two entries spent their eight-hour day on the water on the north basin; the remaining six teams fished south Lake Leelanau.
Overall, walleye fishing has been fairly consistent this season, Alsip said.
“It’ been a pretty good summer. There have been a lot of smaller fish caught, which is not a bad thing,” he said.
Perch will soon be returning to the docket for county anglers, Alsip added. He knows of few successful catches in the heat of summer.
“That’s more of a September and October thing. Temperatures need to start dropping, then, and everyone will start perch fishing,” he said.
