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| Pretty good fishing. Pretty far out! THE TROPHY spent most of the past two weeks fishing well offshore. In fact most days we were within a mile or two from the Canadian border. It really is a crazy long way out. If you put a little northeast in it or just a little northwest in it as you run out you are easily anywhere from 22 to 25 miles away from the harbor. That’s a long grueling boat ride even on a nice lake. The lake most days this past couple of weeks was far from nice however. Most runs that far out in the average 30 ft. charter boat takes an hour and a half to two hours one way depending on how choppy the lake actually is. That’s a lot of motoring. The fishing has to be really good to warrant that kind of a run. And I felt that it was these past couple of weeks. |
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| It’s a strange environment being that far out. You don’t see land in any direction. Other boats are few and far between. The lake is almost always much rougher out there then near shore. And we are playing in the east/west shipping lanes that the big lake freighters constantly run. Some days it’s a steady parade of big ships traveling in both directions. That adds to yet another element of difficulty in trying to troll with our huge spread out and only able to move slowly out of their way when they come up on you from seemingly nowhere. And some of those ships can really move! It’s unbelievable to see one appear on the horizon and the next thing you know it’s about to run you over! They are very reluctant to deviate from their course even a tiny little bit. Seems like the burden is always on us “little” boats to get the heck out of their way! |
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| But as I mentioned before though, the fishing has been very good out there. In fact, we’ve finally had a few days where we were catching and going just about as fast as we could possibly go. Several days we had much more time invested in traveling then we did actual fishing time! Why those darn fish are that far out is probably directly related to this crazy heat wave that we’ve been having and the near record high water temperatures. Here is a graph of both the surface and bottom water temperatures that a fellow charter captain recently shared with me. The lower picture depicting the bottom temperatures clearly show much cooler water way out northeast of Ashtabula. Exactly where we are fishing! These fish are gorging themselves on Smelt that are obviously out there as well in the cooler water. It’s not unusual to net a Walleye and have it spit out several very fresh Smelts that it had just ate just moments before it hit our lure. It’s a real feeding frenzy out there and I guess this finally qualifies as the “Mother load” that we have all been so eagerly awaiting and searching for all of summer. But why does it always have to be so damn far out when we do find them! Lol! |
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| So just like that it’s mid August. It doesn’t really surprise me that the fish are that far out. I’ve spent many a day in past years fishing along the Canadian line. Most always in the same month of August. But the good news is that they never seem to stay that far out for very long. As the water temperatures start to come down the Walleyes start a steady march back towards shore which is a very good thing for us. In past years I’ve seen it where it’s not unusual for the fish to move a mile or two south in just one 24 hour period. In fact, just in the last couple of days I felt that the fishing was better a little further south then just say a week ago! And the real good news is that starting with this coming week we are supposedly going to be experiencing much cooler weather. Finally! I personally welcome putting the dog days of summer behind us! And it won’t make me mad to not have these insane fuel bills that we have been having here lately if the fish start to move back in. It’s been pretty ugly at the marinas gas pumps is all I can say! Lol! Well that about does it for this one. Stay tuned & stay safe... Capt. Walt Trophy Charters |
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