Slimy, temperamental with razor-sharp gill slits and teeth, the walleye isn’t the first fish that comes to mind when naming a small-town festival.
But what started as a fishing tournament 26 years ago has become a cultural nexus for Fond du Lac. This year more than 80,000 people — double the town’s population — came to Walleye Weekend’s three-day fete, which included, not surprisingly, “The World’s Largest Walleye Fish Fry.”
Fond du Lac is in the same boat as many midsize American towns that host summer festivals (see Popcorn Days, Cereal Fest, Pierogi Fest, Salmon-A-Rama), trying to capitalize on their natural assets to lure tourists, without losing their community charm.
“We’d like to bring in more people, but we don’t want it to lose the quaint sweetness of it,” says festival executive director Mary Ann Dilling.
But how big is too big? The tangle of traffic, which has now risen above a “mild annoyance,” and a spike in the volume of garbage have organizers rethinking their strategy for future years.
By Saturday, Walleye Weekend had surpassed the total 3,115 gallons of beer consumed the year before. “I will guard against it becoming too big,” Dilling says. “I don’t want it to become a huge bar party.”
The center of a geographical triangle tipped by Green Bay, Madison and Milwaukee, Fond du Lac (loose French for “far end of the lake”) sits at the southernmost tip of Lake Winnebago, the largest freshwater lake in Wisconsin.
It’s a year of anniversaries for Fond du Lac, a former trading post, celebrating its 150th birthday and the 25th anniversary of Walleye Weekend. Mercury Marine sponsored the first walleye tournament in Oshkosh, but opted a year later to bring the competition to its home base in Fond du Lac. Thus, a hatchling Walleye Weekend was born.
“We certainly don’t want to get away from the fact that it’s a free family festival,” says festival board member Glenn Brill. “We don’t want to make it so big that it loses its Fond du Lac identity.”
Walleye Weekend has long since outgrown its fishing tournament component, although upward of 600 anglers — a large number of them serious pros — still compete for the $13,000 purse.
In addition, Walleye Weekend hosts several sports competitions, races, games, animal shows and music. The Annual Strong Man Contest draws huge crowds around former high school athletes pulling 7,000 pound trucks. A smaller stage features Barnyard Sam, a local teen band jamming out rock radio hits, while a karaoke booth directly across the lagoon blasts grade school kids mumbling through Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
For three days in June, the town’s Lakeside Park is transformed into a communion ground for generations of area residents. It’s a chance to see old friends and family, to flash plumage and flirt for the younger set. Christmas comes only once a year, but Walleye Weekend lasts three days.
“All the girls come out dressed up real hot and reject us,” says Billy Schnieder, 20, a rough, handsome redheaded day-care worker and freestyle BMX biker performing at Walleye Weekend.
“It’s the highlight of the season,” he deadpans.
Some things never change.
“That’s about how I remember it,” laughs Tom Mielke, 38, director of corporate communications for Mercury Marine, weekend sponsor and the community’s large employer. “You’d get all excited to get here and leave rather dejected.”
Claiming tradition as virtue, Fond du Lac has retained small-town sensibilities, despite its recent growth spurt. The 2000 census lists the town’s population at 41,618 — up almost 5,000 residents since 1990 after a long period of stagnation (a welcoming sign on one edge of town shows the population at 37,000, and a sign on another says 42,000).
It’s not about tourism
Tourists help, too, although the Walleye Weekend itself brings in just over $100,000 to the community, according to the Fond du Lac Area Visitors & Convention Bureau. Although the downtown Ramada was booked solid over Saturday night, most patrons stay with friends or family. The free Walleye Weekend is more about reconnecting than attracting tourism dollars — although this has been a focus of weekend director Dilling.
“It’s a goal of the board, and we want to draw more people from Milwaukee and Chicago,” she says. “We’re ready to start expanding.”
Previously keeping its publicity “very local,” Dilling says, the board is looking to reach down into Milwaukee. Dilling also hints at plans to bring in a major music star next year, someone who could “make Chicago jealous,” although she can’t say who just yet. Jefferson Starship and The Grass Roots are the biggest names anyone in town could remember playing Walleye Weekend.
The fishing tournament, however, will stay. In addition to providing a beautiful backdrop for the fest, Lake Winnebago and its assets remain tied to the identity of Fond du Lac itself.
Prime walleye territory
Twenty-one feet down at its deepest point, the lake provides prime walleye fishing territory, warming easily when the summer sun breaks from behind the clouds. Hotter temperatures mean heightened walleye metabolism, which translates to better fishing as walleyes scramble for food.
Higher temperatures also mean bigger crowds of people consuming more bratwursts and turtle sundaes on a stick. All manner of things that can be dipped, slurped, licked or skewered on a plastic fork can be found at Walleye Weekend.
“People come to socialize and drink beer,” Mielke says. “Personally, I don’t indulge in eating fried cheese curds during the year, but I make a point of it this weekend.”
Anglers are easy to spot, too, mostly by their signature tans, which start at the bridge of the nose, reddening the neck and arms below the short sleeves. A couple of loyalists even have their names sewn into fishing jerseys that resemble NASCAR racing outfits. Often, after the fish have been weighed and the boats are in, they can be seen exchanging misinformation and sipping beer from plastic cups.
“You gotta love the game to play, because your butt is dragging most of the day,” says Miles Mertens, 52. Mertens has fished the tournament all 26 years.
In the catch-and-release tournament 1,723 walleye were caught and weighed in at 4,076.86 pounds, a dropoff from last year’s 2,807 walleye weighing 5,655 pounds. Locals Tod Asmus and Brian Anderson took home first-place honors, seven-tenths of a pound ahead of their competitiors, even though they came in one fish short of the six-catch limit on Sunday.
Despite the long hours (eight hours straight on a sun-beaten boat), Mertens comes back every year and loves to mine the shallows for walleye.
“When you feel that thump on the end of your line,” he says, “all hell breaks loose in 2 feet of water.”
Thus far, the fishing metaphor stops there, as the small pond that is Fond du Lac has been able to absorb the doubling of its population over a single weekend. And, for the most part, it’s a welcome surge of visiting friends and family homecomings, centered on a spiny fish.
“[Walleye Weekend] is big now. . . . I don’t know if you could be too big,” Anderson says.
He pauses and adds, “The more the merrier.”
