Jeff Chisholm’s third year in the Kiwanis Walleye World Fishing Derby yielded a big win.
The Belleville-born Chisholm fished for 36 hours on the Bay of Quinte and the eastern side of Lake Ontario with his fiancée Chanel and their combined four kids this past weekend and managed to catch the biggest bite of the event.
“This particular tournament, you’re looking for the biggest, heaviest (senior walleye) fish in 18 feet of water and we found the biggest one at 11.75 pounds,” said Chisholm.
“It was an extraordinary weekend on the Bay of Quinte, filled with lots of laughter and teamwork,” he stated.
With the kids all interested in gunning for big walleye, Chisholm said they ‘trolled’ the waters with inline planer boards to hunt down the fish.
With the spawn for the walleye coming out earlier than normal due to a milder winter, Chisholm and his family used a Rapala Jointed Deep Husky Jerk 12 bait with a total of 50 feet of fishing line out behind an Offshore Tackle planer board to lure the walleye out from the water.
The winning fish, which was nearly 70 percentage points larger than the number two walleye caught, earned Chisholm and his family $10,000 in cash, beating out around 2,000 visitors to the waters of the Quinte region.
Chisholm, who also co-hosts Fish TV, but works as a realtor as his day job, said he has been interested in fishing right from an age where he was ‘in a car seat’ as an infant.
“I fished with parents, grandparents, cousins, etc. growing up and I wanted to have the same memories with my kids,” he said.
Even amid the glory, those fun family moments on the water – even in periodic blustery wind and dampness – were what Chisholm said would be truly memorable.
“Spending the weekend together, fishing, cooking on our gunnel-mounted BBQ, making coffee and hot chocolate with our JetBoil french press, and taking shifts navigating to keep us in productive waters—these are the moments that truly matter,” he stated.
With fishing season just getting underway, Chisholm said he will not be slowing momentum and plans to enter another walleye fishing event later this month.
