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By Stan Fagerstrom
Part 1
Hang around West Point, Indiana much and you’re a cinch to hear about a man named Paul Wright. Chances are you’ll hear about him sooner rather than later.
At least that’s true if you’re a walleye angler or if you love bird dogs. Wright, you see, is up to his ears in both fields of endeavor. He is one of the country’s best known experts where English pointers are concerned. Now 58 years old, Wright has been working with dogs since he turned 20.
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| Indiana's Paul Wright knows how to go about catching beautiful walleye like the pair he displays in this picture. He'll tell you Mack's Lure products help him do it. |
But breeding and working with bird dogs isn’t his only love. He’s every bit as enthusiastic about putting fish in the boat. You find evidence of that when you realize that for the past five years he’s been a professional walleye angler. During that time he has been a contestant in some of the nation’s major walleye tournaments.
It’s always a rewarding experience to have a chance to visit with someone with Wright’s credentials. I’ve had the good fortune to do that. I’ve not had opportunity to go walleye fishing with him, but I can share with you how someone who did felt about it.
One of the amateur anglers who spent a day with Paul was a man named Hugh Albrecht. I’ve read the message Albrecht sent to Paul after the trip was over. Here’s what Hugh had to say: “Thanks for a great day. You are an excellent teacher on the water and a great representative of the professional fishing community. You do yourself proud by the way you handle yourself. Not only when things aren’t going well, but also when you have an amateur that keeps getting hung up. Thanks for not losing your patience with me. I look forward to seeing you again and sharing another day in the boat.”
If you think Albrecht wrote that message because he and Paul had caught a bunch of fish, guess again. The pair fished together one day during a FLW walleye tournament at Bull Shoals, Arkansas. “It was during the post spawn period and the water was cold,” Paul recalls. “The fishing was really slow. Only 30 out of the 150 competing boats even brought in a fish.”
If you’ve fished enough to know a walleye from a walnut, you also know that a fishing partner can make or break your day. That applies particularly when you’re brand new at a certain type of fishing and the other guy in the boat is a seasoned professional. It applies in spades when conditions were as tough as the day Paul and Hugh spent on Bull Shoals.
I sense that Paul Wright is proud of the message he received from Hugh Albrecht and well he might be. I’ve been out with guides a time or two I’d much rather forget than remember.
I had another reason for pointing my pencil at the well-known Indiana angler and dog expert. It was because I knew he was a member of the Mack’s Lure pro staff. I’d also heard how Mack’s Lure products played a major role in his walleye fishing. It didn’t take long to find out what I’d heard was true.
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| The Mack's Lure Wally Pop is one of Paul Wright's favorite set ups for walleye fishing. |
One of the questions I asked Paul during our recent visit was which of the variety of Mack’s Lure walleye catchers he liked best. There was no hesitancy in his response. “I think the one I enjoy using the most is the Wally Pop,” Wright says. “I think that lure looks like a big crankbait with a chunk of meat on it.”
Another reason he names the Wally Pop as his favorite is because he consistently catches larger fish with it. “I use the largest nightcrawlers I can find on the worm harness behind my lure,” he says. “The combination gives feeding walleyes a big target.”
You have to know what you’re doing to bring a live well filled with a five fish limit totaling 32 ½-pounds of walleye to the weigh-in stand. Paul Wright did that the second day of the FLW Walleye Tournament staged at Green Bay, Wisconsin earlier this year. He wound up with a tad more than 60-pounds for that tournament.
Paul Wright shared a number of other thoughts with me about his use of Mack’s Lure products. He also had comments on how he feels about the future of walleye fishing and where to find the nation’s best fishing for them. I’ll share those thoughts in my next column.
Watch for it because if you’re a walleye angler you’ll be interested in what he has to say.
-To Be Continued-
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