Fisherman Finds Fun In Competition

At least one night a week, Kevin Campeau fishes in a contest to see who can catch the most fish.

Kevin, the service/parts/will-call manager for Dalco Enterprises, a New Brighton, Minn.-based distributor, belongs to two fishing leagues. One of them is a Dalco company league that Kevin founded last year.

“The Dalco league competes every other Thursday night in the summer. At the beginning of the year we select the lakes on which we’ll fish for the season,” said Kevin. “There’s a point system, and a team gets five points for showing up, 20 points for being in first place for the highest total weight of fish for the night, 17 points for second place, and so on. The teams accumulate their points throughout the season.”

You can’t just catch any old fish and have its weight qualify in the contest. Each night of competition, the league fishes for a predetermined species of fish, e.g. walleye, bass, or northern. Twice during the season they have an “all species night,” in which teams compete to have the highest total weight of fish for the night, regardless of species.

There are seven two-man teams in the Dalco league. According to Kevin, “A fishing league forces you to fish for different species. Everybody in our league has learned so much. I’ve taken many of them out and taught them new techniques.”

Kevin, however, never promises people that they’ll catch fish. “I just promise that we’ll try.”

One of the ways to be successful in a league is to “pre-fish” the competition site. That means taking a practice run to find the hotspots on a lake so you have advance intelligence as to where the fish congregate.

I quickly learned from Kevin the secret to catching fish. It all depends on how you present your bait to the fish. You have to decide if you’re going to use live bait (leeches, night crawlers, or minnows, for example) or artificial bait. Trolling techniques, technical equipment and the type of fishing pole are also factors in the quest for fish.

Kevin, who has been fishing since he was 5 years old, has an arsenal of fishing equipment. He has 42 fishing poles, five tackle boxes, four boat motors, a GPS (global positioning system) and a depth finder.

Kevin uses 99 percent of his fishing poles, all of which are rated for different sizes and types of fish. They’re even rated for the kind of action you can expect from a fish. “Some poles are so sensitive you can feel the fish bite,” said Kevin. Right now, he has 19 fishing poles in his boat.

Many people think if they don’t catch something, the fish aren’t biting. “Actually, using different techniques is the key to catching fish.” Unless, of course, Kevin is fishing with a colleague of his who shall remain nameless.

“When a certain Dalco salesman — I call him ‘The Black Cloud’ — is in my boat, I don’t catch a thing,” said Kevin. “Every time I’m with him I can’t catch a fish to save my soul. The fish just jump in the boat for that guy, and I catch nothing.”

Thinking that there must be a remedy for this, I asked about the technique Kevin uses with “The Black Cloud.”

“It’s simple,” Kevin said. “I no longer allow him in my boat.”

Gretchen Roufs, an 18-year janitorial supply industry veteran, owns Auxiliary Marketing Services of San Antonio. To suggest someone you think should be featured in “freetime,” contact her at (210) 601-4572