Trophy walleye pulled out of Cedar River in Charles City

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Nick Litterer of Charles City was spending a sunny afternoon just having some fun casting for smallmouth bass below the dam on the Cedar River on Friday.

Litterer tossed his black-striped, green and orange artificial lure from the shore near the walking bridge, behind the Kwik Star in Charles City — and tied into a trophy fish.

“I was reeling it in, it just felt like a bunch of dead weight,” Litterer said. “I didn’t really know what it was. I definitely didn’t think it was a walleye, I thought it might be a big catfish or something.”

At the other end of Litterer’s line was a 32-inch walleye, by far the biggest walleye he’s ever caught.

“The fight really wasn’t as long as I would’ve expected,” he said. “But once I saw it at the surface, I started shaking — the biggest walleye I ever caught before this was 20 or 21 inches.”

Litterer said he fishes the shoreline in that area a lot, mainly for bass and panfish, and he had just started casting a different plug.

“I knew the water was a little deeper around here, so I switched to a lure that would dive a little deeper,” he said.