It’s been 29 seasons since walleye tournament pro Tommy Skarlis started fishing professionally. It was 6 years before that when he bought his first St. Croix rod, a 7-foot, 6-incher.
So what do those two milestones have in common?
Over three decades, the Denver, Iowa, resident dropped everything else to make tournament fishing his career, amassing top-honors while on the job… and St. Croix Rods have been in his hands for many of those years.
When he and his tournament partner, Jeff Lahr, of Dubuque, Iowa, won the Masters Walleye Circuit (MWC) 2017 World Walleye Championship on Minnesota’s Cass Lake Chain in September, the ultra-sensitivity of St. Croix’s Legend series rods helped them take top honors.
“Without the sensitivity and hook-setting power of both the Legend Elite and Legend Xtreme in our hands, we would have never been able to catch the fish that we did,” said Skarlis. “And I mean that. The weather was less than ideal, and the walleyes were finicky. The rods were the crucial pieces that finalized the puzzle for the win.”
During prefishing, the duo found fish along several steep break lines from 22 to 34 feet of water. After dissecting what they saw on the Raymarine, they realized that only the fish suspended 1 to 2 feet off the bottom were feeding.
“We found the fish spooked easily—with nothing more than the lure dispersing some of them—and had to back way off, make extremely long casts and then start snap-jigging the lures back,” Skarlis said. “And this is where the 7-foot medium-power fast-action Legend rods really stood out.”With so much line out, Skarlis claimed it would have been impossible to feel a hit without super-sensitive, fast-action rods. And many of those strikes came as the jig fell on the initial cast. Even with the aid of brightly colored superline, the dark skies, wind and rain made it difficult to see a strike by watching for the line to twitch. Instead, they kept their line taut to feel strikes telegraphed through the super high-modulus SCV graphite blank. And they had to set the hook quickly or the fish would spit it.”
When the snap-jigging bite slowed, the duo drifted live-bait rigs with chubs and shiners, which is the technique that took their kicker fish near the end of the last day.
With both 7-foot, 6-inch medium-light-power, extra-fast-action Legend Elite and Legend Xtreme rods, the team lip hooked minnows with a size-2 octopus hook and drifted the break lines with slip sinkers 5 feet ahead of an 8-pound-test monofilament leader.
The sensitivity of the rods was crucial. Every fish caught was telegraphed as the minnow started panicking, which allowed the anglers to prepare to set the hook.
“I’ve made it to the MWC’s World Walleye Championship every year since I started, but the win was the one thing that had eluded me until this year,” Skarlis said. “I had it in my grasp several times, but it always slipped away. I truly believe Jeff and I could not have done it without using St. Croix’s rods.”