It’s already been a great fishing season for Estevan’s Paul Skoczylas and the official start of summer is still nearly a month away.
Skoczylas, along with his fishing partner Bill Connely from Weyburn, just won the third annual Rafferty Reservoir Walleye Cup on Saturday, that took place at Mainprize Regional Park near Midale, Sask.
He and pal Mike Reid out of Virden, Man.also won the Estevan Wildlife Federation Boundary Dam Opening Day Classic walleye tournament earlier this month, making Skoczylas the first person ever to win both tournaments consecutively in the same year.
“I was obviously happy to win, it was a good day,” Skoczylas said of the Rafferty Reservoir Walleye Cup.
“I might never win another tournament, but to win both of those ones this year in a row, that’s kind of cool.”
After eight hours on the water he and Connely took the competition with 14.20 pounds of fish, which is the sum total of their five fish maximum, earning them an Alumacraft 1436LT Jon Boat, a Mercury five horsepower four-stroke motor to power it and a Karavan trailer to haul it all from lake to lake.
To top it off, the pair also received a cool $1,000 cash for the first place win.
It was a close call though, as the second place team of Ralph Smart and KevinTannahill pulled in a combined 13.74 pounds, netting themselves $2,500 for their day of fishing.
Coming in third place at the tournament were Ken and Ryan Englot, who caught 11.71 pounds of walleye, allowing their team to walk away with a $2,000.
Skoczylas took the prize for biggest walleye caught as well, coming in at 6.04 pounds, scoring him an extra $1,680.
The weather made it a good day for a fishing tournament with flat and calm waters for the most part, Skoczylas added, saying the previous two years were less than cooperative, with sideways rain on the inaugural year and extreme wind the year after.
Just like any respectable angler, Skoczylas wouldn’t say just what he’s been using for bait, preferring instead to keep his winning tactics a secret, but he joked he feels he’s on to what the fish are doing out there and had no problem describing what he loves about the sport.
“I’ve always liked fishing and I like the competitive aspect of it,” he said. “I’m always trying to learn new things as well, I guess that’s one of the key things.”
The Rafferty Reservoir Walleye Cup, sponsored by Central Walleye Trail, has been growing year after year according to Scoksylas, this time around increasing the amount of entries to 85 from the 59 that were allowed when it started.
It takes a number of volunteers to pull off such a tournament so organizers enlisted the help of the Lomond 4-H club to make sure everything went according to plan.
As for Scokzylas, he isn’t quite done yet, as he plans to take his luck to the Alameda Pike Derby and Ontario’s Kenora Bass International before the summer is out.
