Latest News
August 25, 2025
Please find below our 2025 Sunset Bay Walleye Shootout Year Book, again thank you to all of our particpants and sponsors. We look forward tonext year and we have already begun the planning of another great event.
Best Regards,
July 21, 2025
The 2025 Sunset Bay Walleye Shoot Out, our Let’s get to the fishing. We are so fortunate to have the best walleye fishing in the world, right here in our back yard in Lake Erie. From population quantity to quality; it provided the 15th anniversary great opportunities for all teams to compete and have a chance at the largest purse of cash and prizes anywhere in professional walleye fishing.
Big Fish Friday (BFF) was kicked off with some left-over waves from Thursday’s storm but improved as the day progressed. The good news was that the storm had little effect on the fishing as some impressive walleyes were presented on stage. The top 10 weights proved that Saturday’s main event would be very exciting and very close in weights as we seen weights from the 7.40 lbs all the way up to just over 9.3 lbs to occupy the top ten positions.
Big Fish Friday is always an exciting kick off to the weekend. For this year’s BFF 77 teams presented a qualified walleye of 26” or better for weigh in. This year was won by local angler Rob Oram of I-Kon Sportfishing, hailing from Angola, New York. Rob’s team presented an impressive fish at 9.31 lbs. to secure the victory. Ralph Eades from Rock & Reel and one of the many teams coming in from out of state secured 2nd place with a 8.30 lbs. walleye. The competition remained tight throughout the top ten with David Lewandowski rounding out 10th position with a 7.40 lbs fish. Big Fish Friday certainly set the stage going into Saturday’s main event. The complete results are attached below.
Right behind the weigh in show for BFF, we provided our expanded Friday Nite Prize Pack drawing for the fleet, organizing 50 high quality/high value prizes for our fleet to win. Over $75,000.00 in great fishing products were drawn Friday night; congrats to all our winners; and THANK YOU to all of our sponsors that allow us to build this out and expand it every season. We are proud to provide this to our teams as a part of their tournament entry.
Saturday morning soon arrived, and the Main Event was ready to go. Mother Nature seemed to be apologetic as she provided an absolute perfect morning to launch the 2025 fleet of 153 boats. The fleet took off at 7:00 am off to reach their spots and begin the journey to reach their goals of becoming the 2025 tournament champions.
The fleet returned to port and prepared their coolers for the main event weigh in. Once again, the assistance of our volunteers was spectacular. Off the 153 teams fishing the event, 111 teams met the weigh in requirements for their 6 walleyes and our volunteers delivered them and organized them for coming up on stage. While they organized the coolers, we provided even more value for the team’s entries as we drew the Motor Madness portion of the venue. This is simply and unmatched giveaway for our fishing fleet. Here, we place each individual angler in the official Labatt’s Ticket Bucket and drew our 2025 motor madness winners. I would like to personally thank Bow & Stern Marine, Camping World, Collins Marine, Garmin, Runnings, Financial Trust Federal Credit Union and Olson Bros Marine for their generous donations and continuous support. They truly are a key component to the ability to grow our event for you every season. Please visit with them often.
As we were now ready for the main event weigh in, I was so extremely proud of Ella Monaco ( a local young lady right from Sunset Bay) who performed the national anthem live on stage to open this year. Next to Tom Knuyk proudly displaying our flag; not only is Tom an Army veteran; he is also our main fish handler of the weigh in process. This job is extremely difficult and exhausting; his strength and endurance is much appreciated, hats off to Tom and Thank you for being apart of our event every year.
What can I say about Ellas’s performance, simply magical; I didn’t see to many dry eyes in the fleet or the audience that came out to watch the live weigh in ahead. Thank you, Ella, we love you.
Saturday’s main event consists of two main parts, the largest walleye of the day and the overall big box which is utilized for determining the overall Grand Champion.
To start off, we would like to congratulate the largest walleye of the main event, which was won by Adam Diante of Valley Outdoors (Valley Outdoors Fishing Team) from Cassadaga, New York. Adam’s team presented an impressive fish at 9.62 lbs to secure the victory. Wayne Forester (Ship Faced Sportfishing) landed in 2nd place with a quality fish at 8.84 lbs and Gary Olsen was right there behind him with a 8.58 lbs to fill in the 3rd position. Brain Ranken (Team Pearl Jack) from Port Colborne, Canada in the ninth position their 7.66 lbs fish and Dave Peters of Heavy Hookers Fishing finishing off the 10th position with 7.59 lbs. The complete results are availblae from the main Champions menu.
As we adjusted our weigh in process to weigh the teams in numerical order; it placed my team as the 1st box to come to the stage. I want to thank my guys, Scott Wind, Art Wind and Jim “Silver” Kuwik for their dedication, professionalism, and overall love of the game and the energy required. It is extremely hard to organize, host and execute a venue of this size and fish competitively but with their drive, we swing for the fences and love to be in the mix. We opened the main weigh in with a legal 6 fish box, however small at 24.94 lbs., it set the benchmark for the other teams to target.
With 111 boxes to be weighed, once again the efforts of Diane Steel of Get Hooked Tournament Solutions weigh in services were fantastic, essentially processing all the coolers within a 2 – hour show. Great work. Some beautiful walleyes were presented and the weights continued to climb. A lot of new teams and new faces from all over the country had time on stage with many getting some time on the Hot-Seat position, something we always like to see.
As the final boxes approach the scales, the stage was set for an extremely dramatic finish. Don Skellie of Knee Deep Sportfishing was in the lead and currently residing on the Hot Seat with his team. As we broke into the last 10 boxes, I could begin seeing the excitement and emotion beginning to build. It should be mentioned that Don and his team were the 2024 Sunset Bay Walleye Shoot Out Champions and in an incredible position to become the 1st team to win back-to-back championships for the Sunset Bay Walleye Shoot Out.
Several teams, such as Colton Kneer of Limit Taker Sportfishing, Frank Simonick of Prince Otto Fishing Team and Chuck Pohlman of Catch The Best Sportfishing, who traveled all the way up from south Florida to compete with us; took their best shots to knock off Don and his team. The final attempt was presented by Ashton Laird of Lime Lake Marina as he presented a great weigh but unfortunately fell short by less than ½ pound. Don’s 38.60 lbs. was strong enough for team Knee Deep to secure the 2025 victory.
Don and his team not only are able to have their name added to the trophy again, but they also donned their second set of championship rings, a new set of Professional Fishing Glasses (for the captain), along with additional hardware and trophies; they also earned a paycheck of $46,475.00 in cash. Congratulations to Mr. Don Skellie of Knee Deep Sportfishing on their 2nd Championship win and the 1st back-to-back win by any team in Sunset Bay.
Great performance by Ashton Laird of Lime Lake Marine and his team to secure 2nd place with 36.46 lbs. as well as Dan Hanley for Dragin’ Lures Sportfishing with 35.73 lbs. The complete official results are availblae from the main Champions menu.
Thank you again to all anglers and teams participating in this year’s tournament; we greatly appreciate you being with us. We are already in full swing building out an even bigger, higher value tournament for 2026. It is truly going to continue to set new standards in professional fishing.
SAVE THE DATES:
2026 Sunset Bay Walleye Shoot Out
- Pre Fish Thursday (Fish Donkey) - July 16th, 2026
- Big Fsih Friday - July 17th, 2026
- Main Event Saturday - July 18th, 2026
- Breakfast of Champions Sunday - July 19th, 2026
- Registration for the 2026 Sunset Bay Walleye Shoot Out will be officially open, August 1st, 2025. Get in early and qualify for Three (3) incredible early bird prizes.
- The Big Wave Calcutta is officially open now; this will sell out fast, don’t miss out on this extremely popular part of the tournament.
To all our anglers, sponsors, supporters, and the Sunset Bay community, Thank You.
Much more to follow – stay tuned, looking forward to 2026. See you soon.
Best Regards,
May12, 2025
We are proud to announce the release of our official 2025 Tournament Book.
Best Regards,
February 24, 2025
As of January 1st, 2025 New York State law requires all boaters, regardless of age, to obtain and carry the New York boating safety certificate..
Check out Boat-Ed for details on how to obtain your boating safety certificate.
Best Regards,