It was a grind for William Duncan of Nipawin and Richard Whyte of Shaunavon, but they managed to catch the right fish to win the Vanity Cup.
The team had caught 26.72 pounds of walleye on Sept. 30 and 22.65 pounds on Oct. 1 to secure the cup and the $100,000 in prize money that goes with it.
“I was crying like a baby,” Duncan said when asked about his thoughts when he’d found out he’d won. “We sort of figured at the end of the day that we were going to be close, but you never know until you’re actually told.”
Whyte said he was absolutely ecstatic at winning. At the beginning of the day Oct. 1, the pair was in third.
“We knew today we had to put it together, we had to fight through it,” he said. “It’s not like we caught a whole bunch of fish, but we caught the right fish at the right time and it just worked out for us.”
Duncan echoed that viewpoint.
“We had caught a lot of fish Thursday [Sept. 29] pre-fishing. Friday was tough,” he said. If somebody had asked me Friday what it was going to take to win the tournament, I would have said, ‘it’s going to be 35 pounds or less.’ Not in my wildest dreams did I think it was going to be 49.37.”
The pair has been fishing together in the Vanity Cup for 11 years. They’ve placed in the higher end of the tournament before, so it was quite emotional for Duncan to claim the prize with Whyte.
“It’s not the money. Don’t get me wrong, the money’s sweet, but winning the Vanity, it’s the largest walleye tournament in Canada and it’s one of the top ones from North America,” he said. “We’re the champs.”
With the prize money, the two fishers plan to take a trip with their kids to B.C.’s Fraser River to fish sturgeon.
“I’d like to thank my wife because for 11 years,” Whyte said. “I’ve missed my anniversary because I come and fish the Vanity Cup.”
“There are so many anglers out there that have helped me become a better fisherman,” Duncan said. “First and foremost is Glen Dent,” he said. “He was my first partner. I asked him back in the early 1990s if he would fish tournaments with me because I wanted to learn how to fish Walleye.”
Dent had won the Premier’s Cup before.
This was not the first tournament this year that Duncan had been involved in a victory. In the spring, his kids had won the Lund Angler Young Angler Tournament and won a boat.
“It was an unreal experience for them, just to see the joy and the happiness on their faces,” he said.
Duncan’s son, Chase, did have a question about that: why did he cry today and not during that victory?
“Well, Chase, I did cry when we won that tournament, just not in front of you,” he said when recalling his response.
