#45: South Dakota Walleyes and an Old Friend

We took our first day in South Dakota off to visit the Badlands National Park and Mount Rushmore. The Badlands were just breathtaking. A super unique landscape that is stable enough to allow park visitors free range. We drove through the park, climbing the formations at different points, and then went and saw Mount Rushmore before heading to the Eastern part of the state to begin fishing the next day.

We spent the next day fishing around the Sioux Falls area and some surrounding bodies of water, catching plenty of Catfish and some Pike, but no Walleye, which is what we were after. The next day we got out early on the Big Sioux river, a spot we found from Youtube video, and were unsuccessful for the majority of the day, until the sun started setting and we quickly reeled in a few Walleyes.

We had made plans to see our friend Scott Jungman, who had kindly given us a warm, dry place to stay a few months before when we were struggling for Channel Catfish in the frigid Iowa winter. Not wanting to keep him up that night, we decided to go do some night fishing at a productive spillway we had fished the day before. We both snagged some decent sized Carp, caught a few Pike each, and I managed to catch the biggest Walleye we caught all day, although we had not caught any there the previous day.

We woke up the next morning and drove towards Scott’s house, stopping to do some catfishing along the way. It was great to catch up with Scott and his wife, and they once again provided us with food and a place to stay. We said our goodbyes the following morning and headed towards the Denver area, needing advice on where to fish for the elusive greenback cutthroat.

That was also a wrap for May. Thirteen state fish caught in a single month. We were back on track!