Lake Erie fishing report for the week of August 20, 2017: , ,
Fishing Report Posted: August 20, 2017

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[ Lake Erie & Tributaries Fishing Report ]

Posted by Capt. Walt Ermansons on August 20, 2017 at 13:47:43:

Another very good week of fishing. Not much has changed in the past week out here. Fishing continues to be very good for everyone off of Ashtabula Harbor in most any direction that you care to go. Aboard “The Trophy” we covered a lot of different water all week long depending on whatever direction the wind has been blowing from. As we most often like to do to make things as comfortable as possible for all of our fishing guests, I run out far enough so that we can square off with the wind and the waves right on the tail and then start a long troll with the following seas. Everything runs so much better that way and it is much easier for everyone to stand and navigate around the boat when you’re not bucking head on into the waves. We made a couple of more runs this week to almost Canada with a northerly wind and a couple of days we started really short with a stiff south wind and worked our way on out. It mattered little. Wherever we started it was game on each day and we never had to turn the boat not even one time. All one way trolls till we easily had what we needed for the day. Sweet!

We even got into the low 60’s for feet of water depth after spending many weeks out in the 70 ft. plus range offshore where the Walleyes are really stacked up. And we marked them crazy good and caught them good even in shallower too. Man, really how big is this block of fish that we have out there! Just totally insane! Granted, they're mostly just the two year old fish which are really now almost two and a half years old assuming that most Walleyes hatch around the end of March, first half of April of each year. But none the less these two year old plus Walleyes are seemingly everywhere and more of them are now making the minimum legal size then are not. Boy if I could look into a crystal ball and see what the next few years are going to be like out here on this lake! I predict it will be life changing for a lot of people! Fishing will be so good that boat sales will once again soar around the lake. Property values close to the lake will increase. The local economies everywhere around the lake shore will be significantly impacted as there will be a new “gold” rush with everyone flocking to Lake Erie in unprecedented numbers to get in on the phenomenal Walleye fishing that I am sure is going to come for many years!

The weather this past week was just so, so. We had a few nice days and a couple tougher ones again with stronger winds and even one day with strong threatening thunderstorms. Such is life on the big lake in the summer. Once again aboard “The Trophy” somehow we managed to get all of our trips in and actually was back to the dock quite early on a few of the days. Those plentiful two year old fish dominated the catches most everyday this past week with the occasional “monster” Walleyes a bit harder to come by. It is what it is and you graciously take what the lake gives you. Most everyone has been great sports about the size of the fish this summer and I think that I’ve taken it a lot tougher then my guys have feeling like I should be catching racks of trophy fish everyday like we have always done for many years before this year. But you just can’t catch what isn't there anymore and thank God that this super hatch came around when it did a couple years ago or we would all be very disgruntled!

So now we enter the latter part of August. On paper, I only have six weeks remaining in my schedule. It’s quite possible that I might leave the boat in a little longer then I planned on doing this fall. I will probably only decide on doing that last minute depending on this falls weather patterns and how the fishing is going. Normally I round out my season running some Perch trips. So far for those that have been trying, Perching has been dismal at best. Last fall wasn’t all that great either. We actually converted a lot of my Perch trips to Walleye trips last year because Perching was slow and I got a strong feeling it will be much of the same again this fall unless something drastic happens here in the next coming few weeks. I don’t see these Walleyes going anywhere any time soon in the numbers that we are seeing and they will really be nice plump keepers by the end of September! That beats sitting around for hours waiting on a Perch to bite! We’ll just have to see how everything plays out. But for now, another week of fishing is in the books!

Capt. Walt *Here are a few more dates that have just opened up here just recently because of different circumstances... August 23rd, Aug. the 28th, and Aug. the 30th. Anybody interested, please give me a call! Fishing is GREAT right now!
216-387-2656 (mobile)

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[ Lake Erie & Tributaries Fishing Report ]

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