Quote Originally Posted by jonk View Post
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:

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.