Lake Erie Fishing Charter

With the craziness of our busy season beginning I have been behind in posting a Lake Erie fishing report. Over the last week I ran two trips and spent some time at Kelley’s Island with my wife for a mini vacation.  The weather turned out to be great over the week but with a recent mayfly hatch and some of the Walleye starting their migration to cooler water causing some difficult days of fishing for some.

Our trip Tuesday June 13 I was a third boat for a group of Amish men and they were able to catch a couple hundred walleye, one guy told me he counted forty five short fish that he caught, we ended the day with 10 keepers.  The day was filled with plenty of catching, including a couple bonus Lake Erie Yellow Perch and some great weather for the morning.  Around the middle of the day we lost our wind and gained plenty of hot stifling air that made you wish you were inside with air conditioning.  We started our day around Niagra Reef in the Western Basin of Lake Erie, we managed a few keepers early but as the boat traffic increased in the area the fish became less aggressive and we had to bounce around a few times to stay on them.  We ended our day fishing just off of the Catawba Peninsula in 28-30 feet of water and managed a few more for the box.

After my short vacation on Kelley’s Island I made my way back to the mainland to run my trip on Saturday June 17^th.  The clients I had have fished with me a couple times before and are all very good at casting for Walleye.  We decided to start our day at 6 am to avoid some of the heat and beat the traffic to where we wanted to fish.  On the way to where I planned on fishing we began to mark so many fish on the Garmin that I had to stop and give it a try.  As many other boats drove past us in the early part of the morning we seemed to have a great game plan for this spot off Catawba.  Our first drift we managed 6 keeper Walleye, a few Yellow Perch and some white Perch.  It seemed like the day would be a fast and furious one like many others we have had this year. That hope quickly turned into tons of boat traffic, a couple other boats fishing around us and a drastic slow down from the first slide.  It seemed like our private spot was becoming a parking lot and the fishing slowed down to only keeping 1 or 2 a drift.  We took a nice grade of Walleye with minimal throwbacks during the day but again had to make some minor moves in the area to stay on active fish.  We ended our day with 18 keepers, some Yellow Perch and plenty of sun.  This group has another trip booked for July and are already talking about booking a Lake Erie Perch Charter with us.  We have a busy week coming up with some Walleye and Perch trips.  Lake Erie is fast action right now and showing promising fishing for years to come.

We look forward to seeing you out there and good luck.

Captain Jerod Smith