Heading out to lake erie saturday from IL

[bigfishead]

I did fair on the Walleye. I did best the first day, had twelve nice ones but then it was slow after that with just a few a day. I caught a few smallmouth and largemouth in the marina but only did that a few minutes each day.

I had a lot of boat problems, just bad luck. My slow oil leak seemed to rot my power trim cable insulation and it had to fall off second day of trip when I tried to tighten steering tension. This caused major wire shorting out and had to use duck take and insulation off other wires to be able to keep fishing. Then for some reason my bilge pump kept burning fuses, rewired that when I got home, along with rewiring the other. I don't know what was wrong, a switch maybe but just coincidence they both went out. Then I had a valve stem go out starting home on toll road and I just knew I was going to have tire trouble. Anyway made it home safe and sound.

I caught fish trolling cranks. It got very hot and humid and no wind. The last day my kicker motor wouldn't start, from weather I think. The heat was hard to take and the bite was slow. I found fish on the west side of north bass. Coming back I saw a lot of boats by ballast but I like to get away from everyone. that's the story of this trip, couldn't get away, had boats behind me everywhere I went.

I got some video but not much, and it's still on tapes, haven't even looked at it yet. I did get a lot of photos if anyone wants to see. I threw back all my walleye as I usually do anymore.

Photos on my website



Slideshow video

[Eyezcrazy]

Bigfishhead...........sorry to hear about your bad luck with the boat. It sounds like you still managed to catch some fish and enjoy the lake. It might have been hot and humid but that sure beats rain and storms.

I can't believe you throw back all of your walleye, that would be hard for me to do, we just love them in golden dip batter.....emmm emmm.

Enjoyed your photos, thanks for posting!

[bigfishead]

Well the first day it was cloudy and some drizzle and that was my best day. I should have taken my umbrellas for shade, but I didn't think it would be so calm.

We have a lot of walleye here in the mississippi river if I want to eat any. I do throw most of those back too, but sometimes I will keep a few small ones to eat. There is so much fishing pressure these days that it helps to throw some back. I keep a video camera running a lot of times so that makes it easy to release the big ones. I keep a digital camera too of course.

BTW I was born in ohio and have a lot of relatives that live there that I never see. I bet guys hate fisherman coming from other states so thought I'd throw that in. lol.

[bigfishead]

Here's what I do with the video, this was last year's spring trip:

[Eyezcrazy]

I don't hate fisherman who come here from out of state, they still bring money to our area. I did hate the commercial netters in our waters. I never understood how they could limit sport fisherman to a 4 fish limit in the spring while the netters took millions of pounds. Sport fisherman and charter boats are the life of the Western basin.

[bigfishead]

The netters always bugged me too. I didn't see them out this year, do they still do that?

I guide out some here on the mississippi river and I always ask they they want to release all the fish. But we have a slot limit that makes it hard to catch a keeper anyway. We have to throw back all fish between 20-27" and we are allowed to keep one fish over 27". So we can only keep fish between 15-20". The river really gets a lot of pressure anymore and they even close the dam areas in the winter now because of it. Having said that I caught more big fish yesterday than I did at lake erie on any given day this year, one 28" and two 27".