Our Mission

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 The Lake Roosevelt Walleye Club has been in existence in Kettle Falls since 1995 and was registered that year with the State of Washington as a non-profit organization.

When the club was founded it was known as the Kettle Falls Walleye Club. But after a few years the membership felt that the scope of the club was larger than Kettle Falls, and it was renamed the Lake Roosevelt Walleye Club in 1998. The club did not create the highly successful Washington State Governor’s Cup Walleye Tournament, (a name that has been copyrighted). They came into existence a year following the first tournament. The Washington State Governor’s Cup was the creation of Chris Sanders and the Kettle Falls Chamber of Commerce. The club has been in charge of hosting the annual event since 1997. Now it is hard to separate the club from the tournament.

That first year, there were 76 teams participating, a success by any standard. Compared to subsequent years the scope of success for that first year holds out: In 2009, there were 88 teams, one year saw over 90 teams competing.

The local tournament was patterned after the Governor’s Cup in Fort Peck, Montana. Competitors in that tournament have their fish measured out on the water by one of several official boats located around the lake. The Washington Governor’s Cup used to do it that way, but after urging from Walleyes Unlimited, a sports group that overseas fishing competitions, weighing the fish on land became the norm. In either case, once the weighing and/or measuring has taken place and pictures have been taken, all the walleye are released back into the water. During competition, the fish are held in “Live’ wells on the competitors boats. ‘Live’ wells, are holding tanks usually below the deck of the boat that can be filled via a pump with water from the lake. They have an aerator that keeps enough oxygen in the water to keep the fish alive.