Lake Erie Fishing Report

5/9/17 Fishing Report

After a week of high winds and rain that seemed like it was never going quit, we decide to venture out into Lake Erie to do some pre-trip scouting.  With a trip this weekend and nothing to do, I talked a friend into doing some fun fishing with me on the Erie Breeze.  As we left Channel Grove Marina, the lake was calm and the sun was shining bright, which made for a great ride.  As we approached Kelley’s Island the water clarity quickly turned from stained to a mud color.  A quick check of the south side of the island showed no change to the clarity, so a quick run was made to the North East corner.  As we approached the area it was clear that we weren’t the only ones with the plan to fish the East side of the island.  We searched the areas of clean water near the airport in 12-24 foot of water but the marks were scarce.  The Erie Breeze continued searching around 26-40 foot of water just north of Kelley’s Island airport that had a stained color but showed quality marks on the Garmin fish finder in the bottom two thirds of the water column. The wind was less than 10 mph and out of the North which made for a nice drift while we were casting harnesses.

We were able to run two bottom bouncers off the side of the boat and cast two rods, the drift speed was around 1 mph with less than two foot waves.  We started with a one ounce bottom bouncer with a gold harness tipped with a night crawler and a two ounce bottom bouncer with a purple harness tipped with a night crawler.  The casting rods had the same set of harness colors with three quarter ounce egg sinkers pulling through the middle of the water column.  We ended pulling two quick throwbacks on the purple harnesses, one from the bottom bouncer and one from the casting harness.  A quick change of harness colors to all purple was made due to stained water and fish being taken on that color.  We managed to pull one more throwback on a bottom bouncer that was switched to a two ounce with purple harness.  All of the throwbacks were taken in thirty four feet of water before we managed one nice 18” eater sized walleye taken in the middle of the water column on purple at 26 foot.

We had a limited time frame to fish due to prior commitments that my friend had but enjoyed some nice weather and a little bit of action after a week of dreaming about fishing.  All in all it was good to just be on the water and I was happy to find some fish that are close to the marina.  It sounds like the casting bite is ready to turn on after we get some warmer weather that will increase the water temp in Lake Erie.  Our Lake Erie Fishing Charter season is about to be in full swing and we can’t wait.  We hope you all can enjoy this great resource during the 2017 fishing season that is predicted to be a great year.

Captain Jerod