PWT Dryden, Ontario August 13th-15th
Day 3PM
Story by Julia Davis

 
Dan "The Man" Dolinski Wins the Berkley-PWT Can/Am Challenge!
Team Canada: 592.27
Team America: 582.95
 

The first, and hopefully not the last, Can/Am challenge ended today with team Canada winning the bragging rights thanks in part to Canadian Pro, Dan Dolinksi's, domination over the last three days. Dan took a 5 pound lead on day one, then expanded it to a 10 pound lead on day 2, and didn't even have to catch a fish today to win it. Although his basket was smaller today, his 5 fish limit weighed in at just over 5 pounds, bringing his final weight to 42.04 pounds!
 
Juls: How does it feel to come from so far away to a lake you've never fished before and then dominate the field the way you did?
 
Dan: (laughs) Well, it's quite an honor actually. I consider myself very fortunate and very lucky.
I was competing against the best of the best in the US, and in Canada, but it's the US that's especially exciting. Those guys are real pros. For most of us Canadians, or at least for myself, it's just a hobby, so I think we were quite fortunate to win this event.
 
The winning Co Angler is Dale Smoke, who also led from wire to wire. It was close today, but he managed to hang in there to win! Dales final weight was 36.24 pounds.
 
Canadian Pro, Wayne Wagner, of St. Andrews, CAN brought in 9.80 pounds to land him in second place with a total weight of 35.93 pounds. It was an exciting end, because there was rumor buzzing around that there was a 20# basket yet to be weighed in, and when Wayne was the last one, we all thought he might be the one to knock Dan of the top of the leader board, but that what it was....only a rumor. He would have to settle for second place.
 
Both team captains expressed how grateful they were for all of their "players" who gave it everything they had, and how proud they were to have everyone there on their team, representing their countries.
 
The camaraderie amongst all the anglers, no matter which country they were from, was just incredible and inspiring. The entire event just oozed fun and excitement from beginning to end!  Both countries should be very proud of the people they have representing them in this sport, because they don't get any better than this!
 
In third place is the American Pro Perry Good of Branierd, MN. Perry brought the biggest fish of the entire tournament to the scales today, and won the WalMart Big Fish award for day 3. That behemoth Walleye weighed in at 10.09 pounds, bringing his 5 fish basket weight up to 15.42 pounds, and his total weight to 34.46 pounds.
 
Rounding out the top 5 Pros are:
Fourth Place: Canadian Pro, Scott Dingwall of Dryden, Ontario, who's total weight was 32.78 pounds.
Fifth Place: Canadian Pro, Alex Keszler of Winnipeg, CAN, who's total weight was 32.46 pounds
 
For full results for both the Pro and Co's please see: http://www.liveleaderboard.com/LeaderBoard/event_redirect.aspx?t=405&s=Pro&c=PWT%20%20-%20Super
 
The total number of fish caught for this event were: 731
The total weight was 1,175.22
The average weight was 1.61
The number of limits caught were 140!
 
One comment that kept getting brought up was the fact that so many limits were caught during this "artificial only"/no live bait event.  Many of the anglers commented how great the Berkley GULP! product was to use, and that they were going to stop buying live bait. "You don't have to babysit this stuff like you do live bait", said Alex Keszler. "I don't know what's in it, but it's really an amazing product"!
 
What does the future hold as far as the possibility of another Can/Am challenge? No one knows, but everyone would like to see it happen again sometime in the near future. It was a great event, with excellent attendance from the people of Dryden.  The town rallied behind the event and it seemed that no matter where you went in town, EVERYONE knew it was going on.  A television station had a loop running all day and night long...showing the entire weigh in from start to finish! That's just incredible, and unheard of in the states!
 
I would like to send a special Thank You to Malina at the Dryden Chamber of Commerce and to Jeff from the Dryden Municipal Telephone Service for all their help in making it possible to do a live webcast of the event. It couldn't have been possible without you!
 
Look for video of this event in the near future on Walleye Central's video page. I'll be sending it to our creative genius, Jake, to do his magic on it first.
 
Join us here on Walleye Central's Live Leader Board, next week, as we bring you live coverage of the Master's Walleye Circuit event in Dunkirk, NY August 22nd-24th.
The fishing doesn't get any better on Lake Erie than it does in Dunkirk in the summertime!
 
Hope to see you all there!