Mike set the hook on a plump three pound walleye and as I scooped the walleye into the net I noticed that my rod was arching towards the back of the boat and I set the hook on a twin of Mike’s walleye. The morning was just dawning on a great day in South Dakota. The wind was beginning to blow a little, but by the afternoon we would be hunting pheasants and the wind would be refreshing.
Mike ( my accountant and hunting and fishing buddy) and I had decided to go to South Dakota to make a combined trip of walleye fishing and pheasant hunting. The fall is some of the best walleye fishing in South Dakota and when you combine it with the very best pheasant hunting your trip is in a sportsman’s paradise.
When the wind blows on Oahe, the waves pounding ashore loosen the soil and form a mud line. Walleyes like to use this mud line as an umbrella allowing them to feed in water as shallow as two or three feet deep. On calm days, however, they prefer rock or shale on a sharp breaking, extended point. On some days you may find the fish holding just below the first lip of a drop off. Some days they are deeper. Thus, stair step drop offs add to the attractiveness of a point, and on different days you may find fish on any ledge down into 50 or more feet of water. The point is, walleyes often prefer structural elements that allow them the most possible options regardless of the weather. These are high percentage spots.
Don’t forget to check out some other productive areas such as roadbeds, riprap, creek channels, stump fields, or isolated rock piles, bars and rockslides.Suspended fish are also common, and there are ways to take them. Downrigging is an overlooked presentation option that’s dynamite on these fish. When you are running across the lake, it’s a good idea to watch your Pinpoint 7520 depthfinder for schools of baitfish. If you locate the baitfish, the walleyes are usually just below or slightly behind the cloud of baitfish.
The presentation of choice is a spinner. Color can be very important. My five favorite colors for fishing reservoirs are fluorescent orange or red, chartreuse, green, nickel and gold. Expect to find definite preferences on certain reservoirs. However, don’t get hung up on one specific color. Keep switching colors until someone finds the hot color of that particular day.
South Dakota, has some great fishing in other species as well, but Mike and I also want to spend a portion of the day hunting pheasants. So at noon we pulled the boat from the water and packed it at the hotel where I picked up Savannah, my yellow lab and shotgun.Throughout South Dakota there are places that hold pheasants in huntable numbers. There are private lands with scattered potholes and sloughs or woody draws that provide good places to hunt.
Public lands, whether game production areas managed by the state or federal waterfowl production areas, are also excellent spots for hunters to look for a few roosters. Hunt where the cover is the best. This means usually close to food source and water. Often the best weeds lie along fringes. Next to fence lines and irrigation ditches, shelterbelts, railway sidings and road ditches. The key elements here are food proximity and dense cover. A pheasant needs a variety of cover in order to survive. The pheasant needs overhead cover in the daylight hours and needs roosting cover (off the ground) and dense cover for warmth, during the night. If this cover is adjacent to a food source, such as corn, watch out, this is where you'll find them. If you want to increase your chances, hunt these areas in the morning and in the late afternoon. That's when most of the birds are the most active and when they are in huntable cover.
Savannah, my yellow lab stuck her nose into some of the thickest cover as Mike and I quickly loaded our shotguns. Mike stepped to my left around the bush where Savannah had her complete attention directed, and I moved to the right. Suddenly two rooster pheasants busted from the bush with raucous cackle and a flurry of wings. One rooster banked left the other right and both were caught by shot pattern. The afternoon started off with a double, just like the morning, and the combined trip of walleye fishing and pheasant hunting was a success.
In South Dakota, the weather is usually nice until mid-November, so pheasants have no reason to seek the shelter of heavy cover. They can be found anywhere. A patch of grass around a dam, in the middle of a plowed field, or a few cedar trees on a grassy hillside, are all it takes to hold roosters.
In the middle-season the birds are where most hunters would expect them. The thicker, deeper and more tangled the vegetation, the better the pheasants like it. Pheasants love trees because they break the wind and are often an essential ingredient of late season pheasant cover. In treeless areas, birds gather in cattail sloughs or brush draws in the vicinity of food. In this thick cover, a dog is a great help.
All in all, South Dakota is truly a paradise, not only for the pheasant hunter but also the waterfowler, deer hunter and turkey hunter. Let us not overlook another important area that South Dakota abounds with and that is fishing. The Missouri river and Lake Oahe and Lake Sharpe are some of the top walleye, northern, bass, and Chinook salmon waters here in the Midwest. So next time you think you might like to try another hunting or fishing area take a look at this paradise.