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After reading the results from last weeks NWT results, and experiencing some of the best "trophy walleye" fishing I've ever had, this spring. Has this year, and the last couple of years been the "BEST" Lake Erie has had to offer for true trophy potential??
Or has it been like this, and I'm just finally learning what the lake has to offer???
Opinions please!!!!
I remember as a kid and fishing with my Dad off of the Huron pier back between'92-'96 and limiting out several times with some hawgs.Attachment 3976Attachment 3977Attachment 3978
I can only comment back to the early 80's as a kid. Lake Erie has had some ups and downs, but has in that time been a walleye factory with plenty of trophies swimming around. I can remember ice fishing in January '94 and having a bunch of hogs laid out on the ice in our group. There was something like 15 or 16 of us and at least 5 or 6 of us had fish over 10 lbs. with most of them over 6. Having said that, though, when you consider the age of the "03 mega hatch and their average size, it's likely possible that there are more trophies swimming in Lake Erie right now than ever before.
Seeing the nick name, walleye capital of the world, I thinks it's been this way for awhile.
I would also guess seeing walleye are caught across the country, there is more than likely a good reason that there are plenty if post about ppl from Wisconsin, South Dakota, etc. coming here, there has to be a reason these ppl are driving 8 10 12 hours.
I've been fishing erie since the late 70's and its been a trophy lake all those yrs with some ups and downs. but with the 03 hatch swimming around this is some of the up yrs for taking some great trophies. but there is still a few fish out there that's grown even larger than the 03 hatch. and there is a lot of fish out there that's going to be trophies over the yrs to come. erie was named the walleye capital of the world many yrs before the 03 hatch.
I know when I first started fishing I fished the western basin. and most of the fish we caught was eaters with a few larger fish thrown in. but it was nothing for us to catch our limits within a few hrs. and we always heard stories about the larger fish being caught in the central basin. then a guy I worked with bought a boat from a charter caption that fished the central basin. and he set up a charter with him and he asked if I wanted to go. this was probably around the early 90's and I said I would go. we caught a lot of 26" to 30" fish at that time. then I bought a bigger boat and line counter reels dipsy divers and worm harnesses and started fishing the central basin. I'm still learning to fish the central basin. we usually do good but could do better on a lot of days. but I've been catching plenty of those 26" to 30" with some 32" and 33" fish ever since I started fishing the central basin. we caught more small fish last yr than I've ever caught on the central basin. I don't know why we were catching the smaller fish but its a good sign for the yrs to come.
I fished a lot in the 60s 70s and 80s and owned several boats Walleye fishing was almost always good but most was done with casting weight forward Erie Dearies silver/gold nuggets then I quit for a while and just recently got back. I believe that with the increase of trolling and better equipment and better information this is the best quality of fish. Let's hope the hatches continue to be good
I started fishing the lake in 1955 as a 7 year old boy after my father bought a 22 ft Cruise Along cabin boat at Gem Beach boat sales at Gem Beach, the salesman was Bob Clemens and his son opened up a boat sales on Sandusky Bay later in life.
We did not know very much about Pickerel (walleye) fishing at the time but did learn some things from Buck Perry and Glen Lau who both had weekly TV shows on our only TV channel available as well as from some of the local bait stores. We started fishing with the time tested Helein Flatfish which is still available but is now made with synthetic materials instead of wood by the Yakima Bait company. I cannot remember the exact size or what F series we used but the colors were Orange with black dots, red and white and the frog color all were about 4 inches long they were the only ones available at the local shops. We always tipped the gang hooks with a night crawler.
Most of our fishing was confined to the South Passage and maybe once a month we would make the run from East Harbor to the Niagara Reef area. The reef area always produced allot of walleyes and I can remember having walleyes laying in the bottom of the boat as well as having the cooler full also. Looking back at in time I am no longer proud of those days as there was no limit on either size or numbers and it was not uncommon to have 40 or 50 walleyes from a days fishing at the Niagara Reef area it just seems to me that we over did our harvest and should have been more conservative. We had no sonar or VHF radios to help us. We just simply went fishing.
Then the pollution hit the lake in the sixties and you would fish all summer for the same number of fish we now catch in a week, the walleyes just disappeared. During this time the smelt population exploded and as the lake became cleaner again and the walleyes made their recovery the population boomed and that was the beginning of what we have today. There was an overabundance of food with the large smelt population and the walleyes grew to a much larger size than before the bust.
The state stepped in and put a 10 fish limit per day per fisherman. It was not uncommon to have a ten fish limit in the 80 to 100 lb range. But the fishing had changed and we no longer trolled but were drifting and casting worm harnesses and lake Erie Hellions. As the population started to decrease again the state again lowered the limit from 10 fish to 6 fish per day per angler.
So in spite of mans best efforts to destroy the lake, along with it the fishery, by(with) greed, pollution and ecological destructive practices the lake still produces walleyes by the millions. It is more balanced today and the results are the food base remains large enough to support those millions not only in numbers but large enough to grow them to trophy size.
Glen Lau. I haven't heard that name in a long, long time.
I'd surely disagree. I started fishing for Walleye in the 80s when I was 10, and on into the mid 90s, you could go out with some forward weight lures and slay them. Plenty of hogs, it was rare to get one under 20". I remember me, dad, and two other guys limiting out without issue. Even on hot August days, even if you didn't feel like casting in the dead calm, just dump the Erie Dearie or Tom's or Reef Runner over the side and you'd pick up fish.
I think that trolling came to be out of necessity because the density of the fish just isn't there, for which I soundly blame the closing of the hatchery on South Bass. You need to cover more ground to get your bait in front of the fish. Personally I hate trolling. I have a 94 Thompson 240 with Volvo duoprops that, even with the engine tuned down so it's just above coughing, still goes way too fast. 2 drift socks and 4 buckets will get it down to a suitable trolling speed, but that's a lot of junk to have in the water. It's also not a boat that's easy to mount a kicker motor on, with a very high transom.
These days I'll drift in the spring, up through June, troll through June and maybe early July, and just give up and fish for perch after that. Not wasting a ton on gas to pick up just a few fish.
I will say that the last few years, things have improved. Day was a few years ago, I'd go out and get skunked more often than not. Maybe I limit out these days, maybe not, but I usually don't get skunked. But the best days? Hardly.
jonk:Quote:
Originally Posted by jonk
I feel what you are saying and you are correct as far as what it was like in the late 70s early 80s. I posted that there was an over abundance of smelt in the lake at that time, they were only there because there was a lack of predator fish(walleyes) when the walleyes came back they came back in large numbers, numbers that were to large for the lake to support. Actually there was an over abundance of other food source fish also. Once the smelt population was put in check the walleyes started to decline again simply because there was not enough food to support such large numbers on a continuing basis. The lake has started to balance out better now and hopefully it remain balanced. Some of the best biologist Ohio has to offer seems to think the maximum number of Walleyes that the lake can sustain on a continuing basis would be fluctuations somewhere between 28 million and 38 million, some of the experts think that even those numbers may be a little high.
Your post that states it was rare to get one under 20 inches should have been a red flag for future population numbers. With no small fish being caught it should have told you they were absent or non existent and had most likely been consumed by the larger walleyes. All fish in lake Erie start out as a microscopic organism much smaller than 20 inches long and those hogs you related to. Like I said the smelt population had been reduced to a level below what would be needed to sustain such large numbers of large predator fish. Just where would the little ones be that should be in line to replace all of the 20 plus inch fish? You should have been catching some shorts.
Spending large sums of money on raising a few hundred thousand fry to feed the larger walleyes that were present in the lake was a waste of resources. The lake has to balance itself with out artificial help. The lake is to large for a put and take type of management system that works rather well on small by comparison inland lakes. The only help the lake can use efficiently is to stop the pollution and the setting of harvest limits. It has been proven time and time again that if the conditions for the survival of naturally occurring spawned and hatched walleyes is not favorable then those same conditions would be just as devastating to hatchery raised walleyes.
Very well put.Quote:
Originally Posted by wakina
On Lake Michigan (SE WI) we have the same complaints… stock more salmon, stock more salmon so I can get back to catching more. Problem is there is so much less food for them, the can't survive. When you dig into the very deep studies and research that goes into a balanced system, your outlook on will change drastically. I spent a half day reading reports and viewing videos on it all… and have far more respect for the efforts that go into it all now.
it's certainly food for thought and I see the logic in a lot of what you say; that said, answer me this: if the fact that in the 80s and 90s most fish were big was an indicator that they were being artificially supported by a freak run of shad and other baitfish abounding, to the point that they were eating their own young.... well when was the last time you caught a small sheephead? I'd easily say that a quarter of the sheephead I get are fish ohio size, and I probably got 1-2 last year that were under 15". So what's "artificially" keeping them large?Quote:
Originally Posted by wakina
Point being, we overfished the walleye back in the day when I was a kid and a teenager, just as my parents and granparents did with perch and the blue pike (to extinction). Day was you could go out and get a stringer of perch, 50, 60 of 'em per person, and they were all good size, 10 inches or so with the odd bigger one. Getting the little 4" babies was unheard of.
Based on the stories (and pictures) I have seen from perch fishing in the 50s and 60s, my own experience walleye fishing when young, and my current experience with sheephead, I'd postulate that big fish means a healthy fishery. Catching fish too small to keep (or be worth keeping) is an indication of an unhealthy fishery. Either it's overfished, or underfed, or something.
Now I do note that the average size of the walleye I get is on the upswing. I think things are slowly improving. But it really did crash and burn there for a few years.