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Area anglers get their revenge
Walleye tournament angler Sammy Cappelli vowed he would exact revenge for a cruel twist of fate that cost him and his teammate a shot at the Cabela’s National Team Championship a few years back.
Competing under a no-cull format on wind-swept Lake Oahe in South Dakota, Cappelli stuck with a strategy of throwing back fish under 20 inches to fill his limit with bigger walleyes. The strategy backfired when the wind kicked up, making Oahe too rough.
He and partner Eric Williams returned to the dock fishless one of the three days thanks to the weather wrecking their plans to catch and keep bigger fish later. Had they kept the fish they threw back, they would have easily won the national crown. Cappelli vowed then that he would bounce back from that crushing disappointment and win it all.
Fate was far kinder June 8-10 for Cappelli, of Poland, and Williams, of Hubbard, as they pounded giant Lake Erie walleyes and easily outdistanced a world-class field of competitors in the 2017 Cabela’s National Team Championship. They lugged home $175,000 in merchandise and cash, including two Ranger 620FS boats with 250-hp Evinrude outboards and Power-Pole shallow-water anchoring systems.
A stickler for details, Cappelli credited their championship with a precise game plan and careful calibration of their Okuma line-counter reels. Trolling Bandit crankbaits on Blood Run monofilament line, the Cappelli-Williams team invested hours on land measuring and checking that their reels dispensed exactly the length of line they wished to deploy.
Their attention to detail paid off handsomely, as Cappelli and Williams boxed 107 pounds, 3 ounces of Lake Erie walleyes. No other team topped the century mark in the three-day tournament off Lorain out of the Black River.
They opened the competition with a five-fish limit at 41 pounds, 10 ounces, backed it up with 27-14 on day two, and finished strong with 37-11 in the final round.
“This was revenge for Lake Oahe,” Cappelli said this week as he reflected on the satisfaction he and his teammate gained to soothe the sting they suffered when their South Dakota strategy blew up. “We would have easily won that year had we not had that weather change that made the lake unfishable and just kept the keepers we threw back.”
Last weekend in Lorain, Cappelli and Williams fished close to the Black River, working 40 to 45 feet of water just 3 miles out. They made precision trolls over schools of walleyes they could trigger into striking by presenting their Bandits at the exact depth where they were feeding.
Fishing out of Cappelli’s Mercury-powered Ranger 620, their haul included two walleyes in the 10-pound class and three more that bettered the 8-pound mark.
“The Blood Run mono really was huge for us,” Cappelli said. “It is easy to manage and fishes precisely, so we knew that with a certain length of line out, we could be sure our lures would be exactly where we wanted them. Others tried to duplicate what we were doing, but their mono and line-counters just weren’t synched as carefully as ours.”
This year was Cappelli’s 13th qualification for the Cabela’s National Team Championship and turned out to be his lucky number. He and Williams are the first Ohio team to win the national title.