A Stevens Point man won the 2016 Cabela’s National Walleye Tournament (NWT) Championship on Lake Oahe in Mobridge, S.D., Saturday, Aug. 6.

Jason Przekurat captured his first pro-am championship win, catching 13 walleye weighing 36.67 pounds, to withstand a challenge from Joe Okada of Cambridge, who finished with 14 walleye weighing 35.22 pounds.

Przekurat took the lead Thursday, Aug. 4, with a catch of 15.84 pounds. “I knew I had a pretty special spot where I was catching fish, because I caught early and often,” he said.

After a catch of 14.16 pounds on Friday, Przekurat held a 6.8 pound lead heading into the final day.

“I felt good going into Saturday,” he said. “But, as ‘unluck’ would have it, the fish weren’t hitting very good.”

He said he began fishing his favorite spot, but that it was windy, with gusts of about 25 mph. “That put the fish into a funk. It didn’t take me long to realize I would have to move,” he said.

He fished a couple of other spots, then went to another where he finally caught a 14-1/2- and a 20-1/2-inch fish. “That was enough to get me started, but I had to have two (walleye) over 20 (inches).”

He went back to his favorite spot again, but never got another bite, so he knew he had to move. “I went back into the scramble mode,” he said, and he went to where he had fished two groups of trees previously.

As he got close to that group, he said he saw another fisherman in the tournament who was leaving the spot, so he took a chance. “I didn’t even go three minutes and got a 21-incher. I felt no one could catch me.”

He was right because he won the contest by 1.5 pounds, with a final day catch of 6.67 pounds for the three fish.

The tournament season for walleye is over now, but Przekurat was busy the following weekend after he won the NWT on Lake Oahe. He’s an adviser for the Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH) team and spent Sunday, Aug. 14, at the National High School Open at Mille Lacs Lake in Isle, Minn., sponsored by the Student Angler Federation with the NTW and The Bass Federation.

“We have had pretty good success, but we need to qualify for the national event,” he said before the event.

For the high school tournament, each team has an adult captain who drives the boat, and the two students run the trolling motor and fish. “We’re there to teach them and advise them to help get them interested in the fishing tournaments,” he said.

At the tournament, Przekurat’s son Jay and his partner, Wyatt Szymanski, were fourth. “They just missed on qualifying for the regional,” Jason Przekurat said. “They could get another chance if another team back out.” The team caught five fish weighing 20 pounds, 10 ounces to finish behind the third-place catch of 21 pounds, four ounces.

In addition to the fourth-place finish, the other two SPASH teams also placed at the Mille Lacs Lake competition. The team of Jesse Pliska and Cole Zagrzebski with adviser Bob Zagrzebski finished 13th with a catch of four fish weighing 10 pounds, nine ounces; and the team of Chase Miller and Sam Medo with adviser Dean Miller was 23rd with a catch of two fish weighing five pounds, 14 ounces.

Przekurat said he got interested in fishing as a youth and enjoyed it, so he kept doing it.

He started out doing one tournament a year, then ran into Norb Wallock, a full-time walleye fisherman who was a Stevens Point native. “He saw something in me and told me I should pursue becoming a professional,” Przekurat said.

“I did it for a year and then kept pursuing the career,” Przekurat said. “That got the ball rolling for me. He said I had a special gift and might have a chance to do this for a living.”

Przekurat started with the Midwest Walleye Circuit in 1995, where he won the championship in 2000, and has been participating in the FLW tour since it started in 2000.

He was named FLW Land O’Lakes Angler of the Year in 2003 and 2007.

In 2007, he started full-time as a pro and won the FLW Walleye Tournament on the Mississippi River in Red Wing, Minn., on the first weekend of May.

He mainly does walleye fishing, but enters a couple of bass tournaments each year too, sticking mainly to the Midwest circuit from Ohio to the Dakotas, going as far south as Arkansas.

The fishing tournaments run from April to about mid-August, but Przekurat said winter is a busier time, and most people don’t realize it.

He will book sports shows, seminars and other appearances for the fall and winter, with the show season kicking off Jan. 1 and running until the end of March and beginning of April.

“You’re off the water and on the water, so when you get sick of one, you begin the other,” he said.