MWC Lake Erie 4/26/2008 Day 2PM

MWC East Division Day 1 leaders, Jason Kopf and Mike Miller, both of Ohio, win it by only .37 ounces! On day one they led the event with 48.95 pounds, but would only weigh in 27.85 pounds this afternoon, giving them a total of 76.80 pounds.

On a day that would cause many to struggle, due to winds out of the SW at 20-25 and waves reaching 4-5 feet, Jason and Mike managed to pull just enough fish to take over the lead again.

They would have to wait for the last of the teams to weigh in, before they could celebrate their first place position. The Father/Son team of Larry and Larry Rhoads, who finished the first day in second place, and who also won the Big Fish pot with an 11+ pound brute, had yet to weigh in.

Taking the stage, team Rhoads brought up a light basket weighing in at 14.13 pounds, and dropped from second place to 41st place. 

A visibly relieved team from Ohio breathed a deep sigh of relief and hugged after a hearty round of high-fives and hand shakes! When asked about their days on the water the duo had this to say:

We pre-fished Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and only had 4 spots that we would fish. We spent no more than an hour and a half on any one spot, and everything we did was working. We had some custom painted blades that we ran on our crawler harnesses, and I think that was key", said Jason. Mike added, "We were working an area near the border of Kellys, and it seemed the fish were active in the morning in the cleaner water, before 11AM.

After 11AM we would move to the dirtier water and start catching them there. We used Pink beads in the dirtier water and Red beads in the cleaner waters."

Our biggest fish of the day today came 15 minutes before we had to head back in, "that fish probably won it for us", said Jason.

Pennsylvania team anglers, Bob Henton and Lance Conner took second place with 5 fish limit today, weighing in at 35 pounds even. Add that to their impressive basket of 41.43 pounds yesterday, and they ended the day with 76.43 pounds.

Third place went to Kevin Carstensen and  Rich Olds, from Merrill, WI and Stevens Point, WI (respectively) with a total weight of 74.07 pounds.

The presentation most used these past two days was crawler harnesses with small inline weights run 25-55 feet back behine in-line planer boards.

The team of Ted Stehney and Les Burley, said they couldn't get the boat slow enough in the rough conditions, and because they were breaking in a brand new boat, had forgotten one of their drift socks at home and only had one on board. It wasn't enough to slow them down, so they turned the boat sideways and let the boat drift. They used bottom bouncers with spinners/floats and brought in the largest day 2 basket weighing in a whopping 42.28 pounds.

Many anglers were just happy to be back on shore this afternoon. It was said over and over, that "it was rough out there today". John Mathews said, "We gave ourselves an hour and a half to get in" we wanted to make sure we made it in safe and sound it was slow going with 4 and 5 footers out there".

While the MWC East Division event is over, the Walleye Madness "Sweet Sixteen" continues on for one more day. The top four teams will head out in the morning, where they will fish until 1PM. At that time, two teams will be eliminated from the competition.

The final two teams will go back out at 2PM and fish until 6PM. The final weigh in will determine the Champions.

Thanks for joining us here on Walleye Centrals Live Leaderboard, and look back here tomorrow evening for more pictures and results of the Sweet 16 event.