Tuttle father and son Steven and Weston Weisenburger have been trying for 20 years to win the North Dakota Governor’s Walleye Cup tournament. They finally found success over the weekend by concentrating on an area of Lake Sakakawea with which neither angler was familiar.
“The place we caught them — we’ve never fished it in our lives,” Steven said.
He and his son caught 42.22 pounds of walleye on Friday and Saturday to win the 2023 derby by more than a pound.
“Me and my dad fished (the tournament) all these years. We just can’t believe it finally happened,” Weston said. “Everything came together.”
The team of of Marc Beyer, of Garrison, and Jason Kobes, of Bismarck, finished second with 41.11 pounds. Tyler Heringer and Brandon Wald, both of Minot, finished third with 41.01 pounds. Andrew Keller, of Minot, and Lucas Bruns, of Watford City, were fourth with 40.87 pounds. Chad Olson and Tripp Olson, both of Underwood, rounded out the Top Five with 40.23 pounds.
People are also reading…
The Governor’s Cup is generally considered the most prestigious fishing trophy in the state. The tournament is based out of Garrison and nearby Fort Stevenson State Park, with daily weigh-ins Friday and Saturday at Garrison City Park. The majority of anglers who compete are from North Dakota or surrounding states, though about a dozen states are typically represented. This year’s derby was the 48th.
“We had an awesome, awesome tournament,” Chairwoman Joyce Pfliger said. “The weather was good, we had lots of volunteers, the boats were out in plenty of time, it went excellent. The fishing was good.”
Anglers caught a total of 4,528.8 pounds of walleye. Gene Fetzer and Gerald Roland, both of Garrison, landed the biggest whopper, at 7.86 pounds.
The Weisenburgers’ previous best finish in the tournament was sixth place, last year. They were sitting in fourth at the end of the first day of fishing this year, and their take on the second day was smaller than the first.
“When we were driving in on the second day with our fish, it was crossing my mind, ‘I think we can get in the Top Five,’” Weston said. “It just didn’t even cross my mind about winning — I thought we had fallen a little bit short. I still can’t believe it. To fish all these years … we definitely had a little luck on our side.”
The Weisenburgers went to a spot based on where their depth finder told them there were fish — a lot deeper than they expected for this time of summer. They landed fish mainly on Lindy rigs and jig raps.
“We just stayed on those fish, we didn’t leave. We caught them all on the same spot,” Steven said. “They quit biting, we waited two hours, they came back.
“I looked in that livewell, and I’ve never seen so many big fish,” he said. “Nineteen inches was the smallest. Everything else was 22 and bigger. We had three that were 24 inches, and three 26 inches.”
Steven said “It’s pretty neat to win. You think, there’s 263 boats out there, so 262 boats we beat. It’s something you dream about your whole life.”
Last year’s winning team of Cody Pardon, of Burlington, and Josh Gladback, of Minot, finished 11th, with 35.63 pounds. But that was enough to win them the portion of this year’s tournament that featured competition among teams representing states.
A team that wins the overall tournament represents its home state in future tourneys until it is supplanted by another overall winning team from that state. Teams also can represent states that traditionally have few entries without having won the tournament previously.
Montana anglers Ken Schmidt and Mark Jones — the 2021 and 2014 derby-winning team — finished second in this year’s state competition.
The Weisenburgers next year will be the North Dakota representative in the state competition.
Their prize for winning the derby this year is $15,000.
“Probably buy a new fishing rod or two,” Weston said with a laugh.
Full tournament results are available at https://www.ndgovernorscup.com/.