Top 3 teams from 2009 Walleye Classic Tournaments to participate

The top 3 teams with the lowest accumulative point totals following the 2009 Alexandria Chain of Lakes Spring Walleye Classic and the Lake Minnewaska Fall Walleye Classic, will square off in the first annual Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge in Gary, SD, on Oct. 31 – Nov. 1.

“The Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge awards the top 3 teams for their performance, efforts, and commitment to the 2009 Walleye Classic tournaments,” said tournament director, Corey Bohn. “Teams were eligible for the Year-End Awards if they initially committed to fish both tournaments, and if they finished in the top 3 overall after combining their points from both tournaments.”

The top 3 Year-End Award winners based on the lowest accumulative point totals were as follows:

1. Bryan Winterfeldt / Darrin Herd 8 pts. (1st at Alexandria Chain, 7th at Lake Minnewaska)

2. Eric Jensen / Lance Jensen 10 pts. (8th at Alexandria Chain, 2nd at Lake Minnewaska)

   *Tim Servin / Dean Grochow substitute team for Team Jensen

3. Kenny Neumann / Jack Greengo 19 pts. (9th at Alexandria, 10th at Lake Minnewaska)

Team members competing in the Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge will be provided free pheasant hunting, guide, pointing dog, and meal, courtesy of Dakota Ridge Hunting Preserve, Clear Lake, SD, with lodging provided by Buffalo Ridge Resort, Gary, SD. Each team member competing will also have their one day South Dakota Hunting Preserve and fishing license paid for.

The Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge will be professionally filmed and an outdoor TV show will be produced and aired this winter. Format for the 2009 Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins and Feathers Outdoor Challenge will feature a Day 1 competitive pheasant hunt, followed by 5 hours of fishing on Lake Cochrane on Day 2.

“It will be interesting to see how the team members fair when they trade their walleye rod for a shotgun and 3 shotgun shells, and the chance to shoot 3 pheasants with a dog from point,” said Corey Bohn. “Each team member will start out with 30 points and 3 shells in the Feathers Challenge. If they miss a bird we'll subtract 10 points for each miss. The goal here is to still have 30 points after three pheasants flushed and three shots fired.”

The team with the most points wins the Feathers Challenge. In the event of a tie there will be a shoot off. All team (and individual) points from the Day 1 Feathers Challenge will transfer to the Day 2 Fins Challenge (where inches will be converted to points for each fish brought to the weigh-ins ). Each team will have a 4 walleye limit with a 14-inch minimum, with 2 walleyes allowed over 20-inches.

“It should make for a fun and interesting event, and for some very interesting outdoor TV,” says Bohn. “Some of these guys do a lot of hunting in the fall, from pheasants to waterfowl and deer, so they should score well when it comes to the Feathers Challenge. The guys that shoot a lot will be the one's under the most pressure. We'll be expecting them to hit every bird and that may be a real equalizer because they'll be doing it in front of a cameraman, and they'll have just 3 shots to hit 3 birds from flush. You never know how the bird may flush and it could make for a easy or difficult shot.”

An interesting twist to the overall team format will be the fact that individual points will be kept both days of the Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge. While the teams will be competing against one another in the team competition, they'll also be competing against each other individually for the overall Outdoor Challenge title.

Rules for the Fins Challenge will allow each team to bring their 4 “longest” walleyes to the weigh-ins. Teams will keep track of who caught the fish and the length on a score card to track team points and individual points. Length of fish will be verified at the weigh-ins and then converted to points. Teams must fish together as teams in the Fins Challenge, while the boat operator must operate the boat in the same manner as any other team tournament. Boat operator cannot operate the boat in a manner at any time that would put his partner at a fishing disadvantage. Members of same team are not required to net fish for one another and must correctly account for all fish caught on the score card.

“This should be extremely interesting as well,” Bohn continued, “since none of these teams will have ever fished the lake before and there will be no pre-fishing allowed. They'll have 5 hours to try and figure something out to put 4 walleyes in the boat. The team with the most inches (inches converted to points) wins the Fins Challenge, while the individual with the most points overall from the Fins and Feathers Challenge is the overall Outdoor Challenge winner.” Lake Cochrane is on the 2009 LakeMaster Dakota's digital map card).

“The intrigue here, is that if you miss a pheasant or two as a team, you most likely won't win the Feathers Challenge as a team. You could, however, miss a pheasant or two on Day 1 individually, and if you have a big day on Day 2 during the Fins Challenge in the boat, you could still win the overall Outdoor Challenge title if you were to put up some big points on Day 2, and out-fish your partner and the rest of the field.”

“You never know how it's going to play out in the boat during a tournament,” Bohn continued. “Sometimes you fish evenly with your teammate and sometimes one or the other is hot. Sometimes one angler catches most or all of the fish and the other teammate spends the day netting fish and encouraging his partner to keep it up. It's the nature of the game.”

“In this case, it's still team first because you want to win the Fins Challenge, while at the same time, you really want to out-fish your partner to win the individual Outdoor Challenge title. It should make for an interesting day on the water with the cameraman in the boat, because they'll be trying to do well as a team while putting a whoopin' on their partner at the same time,” said Bohn. “And, there's one final twist to the overall format. That being, can these participants beat The Kid (13 year-old Sawyer Bohn) in the overall individual points race? We're going to insert an experienced young outdoorsman into the Outdoor Challenge, and see how many of these guys he can beat.”

“Sawyer will be a very formidable opponent for these teams in the individual race, because he's an avid wing-shooter and a pretty good shot with a shotgun and a rifle. He's an experienced hunter for his age and really enjoys the outdoors, and when you exchange the shotgun for a walleye rod, he's more than capable of holding his own if you put him on fish.” (In the case of the Fins Challenge, Sawyer will be guided by his dad and will have the same 4 fish limit as the teams while being allowed to use 2 lines).

Teams will be allowed 4 lines total, 2 per angler. Anglers must designate which two rods per angler to properly track individual points. Results from the Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge will be posted on this website as will video highlights following the event. The outdoor TV show will air on Fox Sports North (FSN) in the months ahead. We'll post the air times and dates on this website as well as various outdoor related websites closer to the air dates.

Sponsors for the 2009 Buffalo Ridge Resort Fins & Feathers Outdoor Challenge include: Buffalo Ridge Resort, Prairie View, Dakota Ridge Hunting Preserve and Deuel National Bank. Associate sponsors include Stone Hill Pheasants & Gate City Lodging, Warrior Boats, LakeMaster, Excellent Multimedia, the Walleye Classic Tournament Series, and Minnkota Outdoors TV. To view sponsor websites, click on the name of each sponsor listed above.