

MTT. Minnesota Tournament Trail
NWT. National Walleye Tour
AIM. Angler’s Insight Marketing
Chili Bowl, Border View Lodge
Arnesen’s, Summer Tournament
River Bend Resort, Ladies tournament
Zippel Bay Resort, Northern Pike Tournament
AND MORE!
When you chat with anglers who fish the MTT (MN Tournament Trail) walleye tournament, there have been a lot of memories throughout the year. But in many cases, the tournament has been on the radar screens of most is the championship that takes place at Lake of the Woods this week. Thursday and Friday, September 17 – 18, some of the best anglers in the state will be competing for a new boat, prizes and of course, cash prizes.
Throughout the year, anglers competed on a variety of lakes and rivers in MN to qualify for the championship including the Lake Mille Lacs, Lake Winnibigoshish and Lake of the Woods. Big Stone in early May was canceled due to COVID-19.
Like many things in life this year, tournament organizers had to adapt to this year’s new normal. The tournament championship would normally be a traditional format in which anglers would bring their walleyes to the scales each of the two days for weigh ins. This year due to COVID-19, the MTT went with the PRT format exclusively, or Photo Release Tournament.
This really changes the strategy. In the past on Lake of the Woods, fish over 28 inches were always golden to the overall weight, but fish just under the slot limit that must be released of 19.5 – 28″ were also very valuable. With the PRT format, even slot fish can be photographed, recorded and released. This changes the fish targeted in many cases.
This format has become popular with many as fish are immediately released vs being in a livewell all day greatly reducing mortality.
The MTT is run by Mike and Renee Holt. Mike Holt appreciates Lake of the Woods for the championship for a number of reasons. “First off, anglers love the lake, it is good fishing and there is a variety of lodging. If the lake is rough, there is about 40 miles of navigable water on the Rainy River to fish. During mid September there are often quality walleyes to be found in the river. Finally, regardless of how a team has done on the first day of the two day tournament, you are never out of it as there are monster walleyes in the system. Two big fish on day two makes up for a tough day one.”
The tournament headquarters for this week’s tournament is Border View Lodge which is located right next to the Wheeler’s Point public access at the mouth of the Rainy River. Watch either the MN Tournament Trail’s Facebook page or Lake of the Woods Tourism Facebook page for results each day.
Good luck to all MTT anglers who are competing in this week’s MTT Championship. This is the time of the year when dreams come true!
To learn more about Lake of the Woods, check out the Lake of the Woods Tourism website.
To find a guide, charter boat or lodging, check out our lodging page.
Lake of the Woods
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to