MADISON, Wis. — The sport's top BASS pros discovered a bane of walleye fishing already recognized by their peers who joined them in the Freshwater Doubles competition of the ESPN Great Outdoor Games wrapping up on the Madison Chain of Lakes.

And that is the walleye bite generally goes south under calm, sunny skies.

Validating the point was the fact that only two of the toothy predators making the 14-inch minimum-length limit were caught today under the bluebird skies.

	Two days and more than 30 pounds of fish later, Denny Brauer and Mike Gofron are the Great Outdoor Games gold medalists.

Missouri's Denny Brauer and partner Mike Gofron of Illinois failed to score a walleye but that shortcoming didn't matter in the big picture. Brauer, BASS fishing's all time money winner, and Gofron, a veteran on the Professional Walleye Trail (PWT), hooked the gold medal with a two-day catch weighing 30 pounds, 5 ounces.

Defending BASS world champion Mike Iaconelli of New Jersey matched his skills with 2003 PWT Angler of the Year Bill Ortiz of Wisconsin. The team moved from fourth place into second to win the silver medal with an overall catch weighing 23-8. The shift was based upon the strength of today's catch that included a walleye weighing 4 pounds 3 ounces and a 3-15 largemouth.

Alabama's Gerald Swindle, the reigning BASS point champion, teamed up with PWT pro Dan Plautz of Wisconsin to take the bronze medal with a score of 21-9.

The unique competition paired each respective sport's top six anglers in team match with walleye and bass counting toward the total score.

Brauer and Gofron leveraged their respective specialties to earn the win. For Brauer, that meant targeting boat docks wrapping around the 8-mile shoreline of Lake Waubesa, one of the four lakes open to fishing for the competition. For Gofron, it was taking the pair out into deeper water and trolling crankbaits with planer boards.

"There was no key to it all," said Brauer of his side of the strategic equation. "My intention was to cover as much water as possible to give as much time to Mike as I could."

"We all knew the walleye fishing would be the toughest bite, so I felt like it was up to me to get my part of the day completed early."

In this competition, the anglers were allowed to bring in three fish of each species. By Wisconsin law, no culling was allowed.

Brauer relied on his namesake ½-ounce Strike King Premier Model jig (black/blue) with matching plastic trailer for added strike appeal. The bait was fished on a Diawa 7 ½-foot flipping rod matched with a Diawa reel and 50-pound test Stren Super Braid line.

Mike Iaconelli and Bill Ortiz moved into medal contention on Day Two.

Yesterday, Brauer and Gofron encountered slow fishing until a cold front passed over the area, sparking the bite as a result. They filled their respective limits and took the lead with 21-9.

The presentation involved making random flips and pitches to the docks with the jig. Otherwise, there was no commonality to be found, according to the sport's premier expert on flipping and pitching boat docks.

"The only aspect of the pattern that I could factor was the fish hit on the initial drop," he said. "That was actually a good thing because you knew quickly if a dock was going to produce a fish or not."

Iaconelli, known for his hard-hitting style of bass fishing, applied that strategy in this competition. Each day began in Lake Mendota, a lake managed for trophy largemouth and walleye with an 18-inch minimum length limit and one fish per species creel limit. After catching the anchor fish, the team moved south to Lake Waubesa to fill the limit.

"That was the plan all along," said Iaconelli. "But what was really neat was the pattern-within-a-pattern that we found in both lakes."

That pattern was locating a mixture of rock in the otherwise overabundant growths of hydrilla in the lakes.

"What the rocks did was break up the grass, give the fish an ambush point," he noted. "And in turn, we believe it also attracted crawfish and bluegill that the bass were feeding on."

To catch them, Iaconelli used ½- and 3/8-ounce Mann's Stone Jigs (natural craw and black/blue) tipped with brown and sapphire blue trailers. The obvious target was the rock attracting the bass.

Ortiz carried the team's walleye effort by catching the only two fish of the day. Both were caught on crankbaits trolled over shallow humps in Lake Waubesa.

Swindle found the bass holding along grassy points, where he caught them on combination of two baits and techniques. First, he flipped and pitched a Texas-rigged 4-inch Zoom tube rigged with a 7/16-ounce sinker into thickly matted vegetation. The fish, he presumed, were utilizing the edge as an ambush point.

When flipping the heavy bait into the thick cover failed to produce, the pair of anglers backed off the cover and made casts with a Zoom Z-Nail finesse worm.

Plautz and Swindle both caught walleye yesterday and were confident that the bite would hold up yesterday.

Maybe they forgot to check the weather forecast. Sunny skies and calm winds are a major turnoff for walleye. Fortunately, the curse is less severe on the bass fishing side of the equation.

Final Standings - Freshwater Doubles

1. Denny Brauer/Mike Gofron, 30 pounds, 5 ounces
2. Mike Iaconelli/Bill Ortiz, 24-14
3. Gerald Swindle/Dan Plautz, 23-8
4. Rick Clunn/Ron Seelhoff, 21-9
5. Shaw Grigsby/Gary Parsons, 20-2
6. Gary Klein/Perry Good, 14-12