Getting Caught Up, Lake Erie, Part 1

Mark with the first Lake Erie Walleye of our trip.

In January my good friend Kevin and his son Ben floated by going out to Lake Erie the end of March.  They had found a house near Port Clinton, Ohio that we could rent but they had to act upon it soon.  Our friend Gary Barneson was a district manager for Secura Insurance in Appleton Wisconsin years ago and he had an agent who's son was a Tournament Walleye fisherman.  Kevin and Gary met his son out there and the rest is history.  Ben was out last year with his Ranger 618T with a 90 hp (crazy) but now that he has purchased a new Ranger 620FS like mine, he was anxious to go.  I checked with my brother Steve and friend Mark Applen to see if they would be interested as we are all retired and have time.  Mark's first response was...."This is a bucket list trip, I'm in!!"  Steve didn't take long to commit as well so I told Ben to count on us, I'll bring my boat for us and will meet up with you and drive out.  After settling the rental property, we had our dates set, leave Saturday, March 28 and return the following Saturday, spending a week out there.  Ben stated that one needed a week as the likelihood of getting blown off the lake a couple of days was really high so staying a week would assure some quality fishing time.  He was correct as we arrived Saturday evening around 7:30, the forecast for Sunday was high winds and small craft warnings (that meant us!).  Sunday was spent going over the different landings, stopping to buy food for the week, and checking out the local sporting goods store called Fisherman's Central.  Port Clinton is definitely a tourist town as there are a great number of campgrounds and resorts to stay and enjoy the region.  We went out to Catawba Island to check out some things there and discovered a local winery.  Stopping in it was very nice and had a good process for trying their wines, unfortunately their tastes and mine didn't fit very well.  With Monday's weather looking better we got up and headed to Muzurik Public Boat Landing on Marblehead Point.  Just north of this is Kelley's Island were we intended to fish the area around there.  Although I have fished planer boards in the past on Lake Mille Lacs, because we can fish up to 3 lines each, our strategy was to fish 3 planer boars off of each side, each at varying depths to try and figure out a strategy.  The initial word is at that time of year the big females have yet to spawn and they are staged in certain areas getting ready to spawn.  The key is to find the area they are staging at then troll through these schools with deep diving crankbaits with the Bandit Walleye Deep being the bait of choice.  One soon learns why.  

Bandit Deep Walleye in Rotten Fruit color

Although we were normally fishing in 30 - 40 feet of water, these walleyes are generally suspended off the structures and these Bandits run pretty consistent.  Therefore using one type of bait, it becomes a lot easier to remember how deep you are running the lures and which ones are hot and which ones are not!  Also these baits have a nice rattle chamber in them and as they go through the water they are constantly making noise which attracts the wallleyes.  At 70 feet of line out they are running about 15 - 17 feet deep.  This one called Rotten Fruit was responsible for the first walleye caught in the boat, the largest walleye I had ever seen and because Mark had the first line, he brought in his personal best.  This walleye looked about 32 inches but it was really only about 29 and weighed over 9 pounds.  This was our only fish for the day and even though Ben had 8 for the day, we were never very far from him and kept true to what we were told, look for clear water, look for marks on you depth finder, But with only one fish, we hadn't really developed a pattern and as we soon found out, it is important to figure out where the walleyes were staging.  We also had 4 more days to go and even if we only caught one fish, that fish was absolutely the biggest walleye I'd ever seen! We figured it would take a few days to get things dialed in and that wasn't too far from reality.

Picture of my graph with all the fish

There are two interesting twists to the Lake Erie story.  The sad aspect was that Kevin's father-in-law, Richard Myren, was in put into Hospice before we left as at the age of 89 his cancer had finally taken over.  With hospice one never knows however as we drove down on Saturday Kevin received a call that Richard had died that morning.  Kevin, Ben, Heather and Jared were looking at options but in the end decided to drive home on Tuesday as the funeral was set for Wednesday.   He left his boat and they took off early Tuesday morning, an 8 hour drive back.  The second interesting aspect was in the house next door to us were a group of guys from North Dakota doing a segment for a show called Fish Addictions.  They gave us a lot of tips including a waypoint we should checkout as they stated they had found a school over a mile in length and did really well on Blue Chrome Bandits 50 - 70 feet back.  They also left Tuesday morning so Ben got the picture of the waypoint and sent it to me.  That's a great place to end part 1 and a great place to start the next post.  Fish Addictions has a website and posted this article on their blog which really says it all!  https://www.fishaddictions.com/post/5-tips-for-erie.  And here is the Fish Additions video that they shot a couple of days before they lefthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pauhRYLOl0&list=PLkmn3I-Vc-vpDhw-tAeX6962aDaOyroa5&index=12  it's definitely worth watching.  Next week you can see how we did after meeting these guys!