The solunar table I saw said Friday would be a 3-star day with a major time of 1:30 – 3:30pm. So my plan was to skip the usual 1:30 am wake-up this time and just get to the lake early enough to have my 6 lines over fish by 1:30pm. I wanted to see if the solunar prediction panned out.
Since we would not be arriving in the dark, it was a perfect opportunity to launch from Lorain for my first time. I heard a month ago that “Lorain was on fire!” and it stands to reason that walleye are migrating east to deeper, cooler water.
However, the wave forecast changed overnight to look a bit more iffy. My brother does not like big waves in my little boat. I decided that instead of Lorain, we should instead be on the lee of Kelly's to protect us from the wind. And I read some of the more recent reports in this web site. It seems that Lorain isn’t so spectacular anymore, but walleye are still being found around old C can, the middle of nowhere east of Kelly’s, and even over by North Bass Island. I know my brother just wants some success.
After I picked him up, I explained this new plan. He asked if I ever use AI to find out where we should fish. I have not. Then he whips out a page he printed. He had asked AI where to find walleye in Erie today. AI’s answer was basically that “Lorain is on fire.” Furthermore, to my surprise, my brother thought exploring a new place was more valuable than actually catching anything.
So we launched out of Lorain. I know Lorain is Central Basin and this is the Western Basin forum, but the folks who post in the Central Basin forum also post here, and I thought Western Basin people might find this informative.
Well the water at Lorain was so rough we wore our big orange life jackets from the 1970s. We headed northwest because we didn’t know where else to go. Passed a couple boats that were coming in. Only one boat was fishing out there. They were at the SW corner of the dump. But we weren't marking anything there but an occasional bait fish so we kept going.
I had to keep it under 10 mph or the impact of the waves would rupture my spleen. We weren’t in a hurry though. We had over 2 hours to find fish before the 1:30 pm solunar major time.
So we snaked our way around, looking for marks on the Humminbird. Went up the west side of the dump, then headed NE to deeper water, about 57’. Could only go 10 mph. We drove for an hour to get just half way to the Canadian line and still no walleye on the sonar the whole time. I mean not even one. Zero. “Lorain is on fire” we said with eye rolls. No fish, no boats. Lorain was dead.
On GPS, I could see that bend in the Canadian line way, way Northwest of us. I knew that corner was either the weather buoy or that old C can Bob was just talking about. So we headed directly into the waves at about 8 mph. It was a long, painstaking slog. We drove that direction for another hour. No lines in the water at all yet because we still have not marked a single walleye on the sonar. This was getting old – and the solunar major time of 1:30 pm was fast approaching.
And then, just as we got to the bend in the international border (and it is the weather buoy that is there) we started marking some fish. They were tight on bottom and kind of looked like perch, but it was a sign of life. We were itching do something - anything - so we deployed the Minn Kota and started putting lines down. The first line was in the water at 1:20 pm and we had a fish before we could get the others in the water.
It was a tasty drum, but too small to keep. After the tedious boat ride, this was quite the thrill. And we started to think there might be something to this solunar business. We quickly got another small drum and began to wonder if this was going to be a drum-only day. But then we soon caught a respectable walleye. By now, a bit west of the weather buoy, right on the line, we were regularly marking fish that looked like walleye. We continued trolling west down the line since we kept seeing fish there. And we kept catching them. We had 4 tasty drum and 3 keeper walleyes in about an hour. No shorts. No other species.
The marks slowed down, so we turned around and headed back toward the weather buoy. Caught another walleye and another drum. By this time, the 2-hour solunar major time was over and you know what happened? We stopped catching fish. We were still marking them, but they weren’t biting.
What was biting though, were little black flies. They were vicious little beasts. They only showed up when the wind started to die down and the sun came out. Come to think of it, the fish stopped biting when the wind died down and the sun came out. Maybe the solunar table takes a back seat to cloud cover and chop.
We kept the black flies at bay with DEET but then we had an infestation of other little flying insects. I don't know what they were, but there were hundreds of them. They didn’t bite, but they swarmed all around our heads and under our glasses. We couldn’t take it – nor the heat. So we pulled up and got some "Yamaha air conditioning," leaving most of those bugs behind.
There is a shallower strip of water, a reef for all intents and purposes, maybe extending maybe all the way from Point Pelee, I don’t know, but for sure going right under the weather buoy and then SE most of the way to Lorain. It’s at least 12 miles long, 42’ of water more or less, with plenty of knobs all along the way. Driving down that reef, we saw the best marks of the day. So we stopped and resumed trolling, still following that reef toward Lorain. It was mile after mile of tons of suspended walleye marks. Ended up catching 7 more keeper walleyes there, while losing two additional. Zero drum or anything else. The farther SE we went, they better the marks. Sometimes we had 20 walleye filling the screen at once. I'm sure we could catch as many as we wanted there on that 12-mile stretch. We said again “Lorain is on fire” but now without any eye rolls.
This second flush of fish all happened AFTER the solunar major time, but only when we had cloud cover. The bite shut down when we had full sun.
For reference, the point on this long reef line that showed the most walleye was exactly 41°33'45.5"N 82°18'15.2"W.
We caught walleye today on bandits, reef runners, flicker minnow 11, spoons and one on a worm burner. By far, the best was a blue and chrome reef runner. We ended up switching everything to blue and chrome.
It was a long day on the lake as usual for us, but pretty exciting once we found fish. It's nice to have one more good spot in our back pocket. And it's interesting to note that the major times on solunar good days are not necessarily the best times; cloud cover seems to be more the determining factor. Your mileage may vary. When we finally called it a day, we had 13 walleye in the box.
