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| Lots and lots! Boy did we ever catch lots and lots of fish this past week. Lots of limit keeper Walleyes this past week. And LOTS and LOTS of throwback undersize Walleyes! “The Trophy” compiled total numbers of Walleye landed in one week to the likes that I have never seen in 31 years of full time chartering. Unfortunately, the bulk of these Walleyes were all undersize of the legal minimum requirement size of 15” inches. What the heck is going on! There are literally MILLIONS of 14” inch Walleyes that have invaded the Geneva, Ashtabula, and Conneaut lakeshore right now. With much weeding, I think we still limited all of our parties out this past week with 24 keepers each day except for 1 day where the weather forced us off a bit early with a few fish short of a limit catch. But most days to get 24 good ones we had to handle anywhere from 50 to 75 at the least sub legal fish. I know for a fact that we are easily throwing back 2 to 3 undersize fish and on some days even more for everyone that we do keep. Do the math! I am running ragged and I know that I can not keep this pace up all summer! |
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| Big fish have been few and far between here as of late but each day we still manage to get a handful or so of the larger fish more typical of Ashtabula sized Walleyes. The rest have been nothing to write home about. Just good eaters. Where we used to need 2 big tubs to off load our 24 Walleyes each day, now we’re only using 1 tub and even then its only about 3/4 full. Like I said, What the heck is going on! I always try to keep my fishing reports real and never sugar coat anything. And that’s about what's going on for us aboard “The Trophy” and everyone else for that matter right now fishing in this Geneva to Conneaut area. Anybody that tells you otherwise, well they are lying. We are overrun with small fish fish right now and either the big fish have been run off by the onslaught of these 2 year olds or somehow thus far everyone's missed where the bigger schools of bigger fish are. Maybe it’s time to start looking seriously further and further offshore in the much deeper water. Even though it’s only early June, maybe that’s the answer. |
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| To give you an idea of how far and how fast these fish can move, I have a interesting story to tell you! This happened just last weekend actually. We were trolling along in the pre-dawn darkness when a rod doubled over with what appeared to be a big fish. Fish on! After a bit of reeling from one of my guests onboard that morning I was about to dip the net on what I thought was a nice Walleye but instead up pops somebody's inline miniature planer board! Inlines are very small plastic planer boards that the smaller boats use. You clip it right to your fishing line to pull your lure off to the side of the boat. When bringing in the fish, at a certain point you have to stop and unclip the little plastic planer board and then continue to reel in the fish the rest of the way. Well apparently, somebody lost theirs when the line broke. While untangling the slight mess from my line, I feel a tell tale tug tug! Heck, there's still a fish on the end of the line hanging from the small board! After hand lining it in the rest of the way in, we netted what was about a 18” Walleye on a Bandit crank bait. Cool! Hit the clicker! Lol! Later in the day by daylight I examined the little planer board and seen the rightful owners name and cell number wrote on the plastic. I sent out a text to make arrangements to return his gear which the owner really appreciated! Then I got a follow up text, “by the way, where did you find it? I lost that thing 2 weeks ago in front of downtown Cleveland”! I’m like, WHAT! That’s 50 some miles away from where we snagged it fishing in front of Ashtabula! That Walleye had swam all that distance towing that planer board in 2 weeks time and was still as fresh and lively as if it had just happened the night before we snagged it! Unreal! So a big batch of fish could arrive off Ashtabula at any time! They are on the move! |
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| Another interesting thing happened last weekend as well. Around Ashtabula everybody that’s been fishing in close for Perch have all been striking out big time. Nothing! Zilch! Nada! Well on one of my northern most exploratory trolls we cracked the 70 ft. plus water depth range. We didn’t find much out there really but did have a very deep downrigger go off out there with a BIG fish on it! After a bit of a tussle, my lucky guest at the end of the rod landed a 27” inch Walleye. Just as I netted the beautiful Walleye and slung it across the stern of the boat, the big Walleye coughed up a 10” inch Yellow Perch! Wow! Some of you that follow along with my little fishing reports may recall that last summer we did something very similar. We caught a big Walleye, somewhere around 29” inch I think it was also on a deeply set downrigger and as I swung it over into the boat with the net it coughed up a foot long another Walleye that it had freshly swallowed and then puked right back out after we landed it! Yikes! Maybe I should start trolling with Musky lures! Lol! OK, that’s about it for another week. Off to bed. I got a bunch of “babies” that I got to take care of in the morning! Ha! Capt. Walt Trophy Charters |
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