A Million Dollar Fish

Big Ed Claiborne actually caught the world record walleye, a little better than 21 pounds. In the 1970's, no one knew it was a world record.

 

Greers Ferry Lake sits in the rugged southern part of the Ozarks down in north-central Arkansas. I first saw it when I was 22 years old, just out of college, the new outdoor editor for the state’s largest newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat. It was January when I went to work there, I graduated from college in December. I had a degree in wildlife management and had been writing a weekly column for the Columbia Tribune. What I didn’t know about being an outdoor editor was considerable, but they hadn’t ever had one, and they were looking for someone who would work cheap. That was me.

Something else I didn’t know anything about was walleye. I hadn’t ever even seen one in person. On the Big Piney River where I grew up in southern Missouri, there weren’t any. The old timers in the pool hall called walleye, “jack salmon” and talked about catching them over on the Current River. In the pool hall, I would read about them in the outdoor magazines which were such a big part of my education.

When I started to work at the Democrat, in late January, Greers Ferry was getting ready for the World Walleye tournament, wherein fishermen from all over the Midwest would try to catch a world record walleye. The prize for such a fish was a million dollars. The newspaper sent me up there to write about it, and I sure as heck wasn’t about to tell them I had never seen a walleye. Dickey Bailey and Big Ed Claiborne had seen several. They were both involved in the walleye classic, and they sort of took me under their wing and promised not to let anyone know I was greener than a spring hickory sprout when it came to walleye.

The irony of that situation was, Big Ed Claiborne had caught a 21-pound, so-many-ounce walleye already. He should have been a millionaire, because his huge walleye is today recognized as a true world record if I am not mistaken. At that time the world record was a hoax, a 25-pound walleye taken from Old Hickory Lake in Kentucky. A few years ago a fisherman involved in that record came forth because he was getting old and couldn’t live with his guilty conscience, and he confessed everything. It turned out that the world record smallmouth from Kentucky was also a hoax.

I don’t believe Big Ed’s fish was legal, because both he and Dickey Bailey had a secret way of catching big walleye… they would go up the Little Red River at night when the huge fish were spawning and fish for them in deep holes below the shoals, using bluegill. It wasn’t legal to fish the river after dark during part of February and early March.
Arkansas fisheries biologists had found a 25-pound walleye up the river the year before, shocking fish at night, a legitimate world record. There was a picture taken of it, and it was used for years in Arkansas to promote that World Walleye Classic. Fishermen came from all over to have a shot at that million-dollar fish.

In a few years, the whole thing was abandoned when promoters from the Greers Ferry area figured out that it was getting way out of hand. There are people out there would do about anything for a million dollars; dynamite, poison, nothing was beyond that kind of person. Dickey Bailey told me once, “You know, there are a lot of people who would murder someone for a million dollars. If I caught one, I might never get it back to the dock.”

So the world walleye classic became not such a big thing, and I don’t know if they even do it anymore. I know that Big Ed and Dickey and some of their friends annually caught a walleye or two close to or over twenty pounds. If there is a 25-pound walleye anywhere today, I suppose it is there.

I didn’t stay long in Little Rock. I’d just as soon live in Chicago. But the Ozarks of north Arkansas was a great place to live and so I moved there. I caught my first really big walleye about fifteen years later when I was fishing Bull Shoals Lake with a wiggle wart lure in early March. It weighed about 11 pounds, was 29 inches long. It had a big growth on one side of it, but it fought like a tiger. It was five pounds smaller than one I saw caught from Bull Shoals by a friend of mine one night in May, fishing with shad under submerged lights. What a walleye that was!

About 20 years ago, I caught my biggest walleye in Canada one October afternoon. We were hunting ducks and geese in Manitoba when someone I met up there took us out on the Red River, noted for the biggest channel catfish in the world. Using a jig and minnow, fishing straight down, I caught a 30-inch walleye in about 15 or 20 feet of water, landed it and took a picture, then released it.

Here in the Ozarks today, I never release a walleye that is legal size unless I have my limit. I release most every bass I catch, and I eat every walleye I catch. They are so good to eat that I just can’t give one up, and when I fry a walleye, I lock the house and pretend no one is home if one of my friends shows up.

Of course I am writing about walleye because it is time for them to spawn, way ahead of everything else. Most will spawn up rivers above the tributaries in water way too cold to induce romance in any other fish. You can bet that right now, even with the snow and the cold, many are staging in deep holes up above the lakes, and when it is finally a little bit warmer, I will catch a few while fishing for whites or hybrids, or bass, from late February all the way into April. They will hit a spinner bait on occasion, because I have seen big ones caught by my uncle on spinner baits. They will hit those rebels and rapalas that you jerk down under water and they will hit a variety of jigs used for white bass. If you really want to catch them in February, use a heavy jig tipped with a minnow, or a blue-green deep running crank bait, and longer thinner ones are better than short fat ones.

Everyone knows they are sensitive to bright light, so those dark overcast days, or early morning, late evening situations are best. You probably can catch them at night better than during the day, but consult the fishing regulations, because for a period of time each spring, it is against the law to keep a walleye from rivers from 30 minutes after sundown to 30 minutes before sunrise.

With low water conditions, many walleye will not go up the rivers to spawn, but will spawn on rip-rap or rocky points out in the lake, and reservoir fishermen catch them there in February and March. That actually happens to some extent each year, even when there is plenty of water.

Big Ed Claiborne and Dickey Bailey are gone now. There are others who will go after the biggest of the Midwestern walleye in Greers Ferry and the Little Red. But Bull Shoals and Norfork have giant walleye too. February is the beginning of it and if it’s too cold for you, then you just ‘ain’t no grizzled old outdoorsman like we was’, back in the days when there were million dollar walleye to be caught, and all my tackle wasn’t worth much more than a twenty dollar bill!

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 654613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. See all the details for our big outdoorsman’s swap meet on March 19, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com