 |
| A tale of two weeks. The problem of doing fishing reports only every two weeks and I think I’ve mentioned this before is that so much can happen in just a two week period. The first week after my last report I was all giddy and so excited about how good the weather and fishing was that I had already picked out my lead in line for my very next report. “Best weather of the summer!” “Finally! A nice stretch of great weather!“ And then week two happened to roll around. Some of the hottest, most humid, gustiest south west winds and most unstable, unsettled stormy weather that we've had this whole year! High winds, massive thunder storms daily with torrential rains and just plain huge ugly sea conditions! To the point where even I threw in the towel for a few days and flat out cancelled all of my trips! And a couple of the days that I did fish last week, well I was wishing that I wasn’t really there. It was just a plain nasty week! What a strange, strange summer that we’ve had here up on the north coast. |
 |
| Through it all however the Walleye fishing remains rock solid here in Ashtabula. We have had no problems limiting most everyone out with really nice keepers. Even the baby Walleye problem has eased somewhat here a bit lately. We are still getting plenty of throw backs but I would describe the whole situation with them as very manageable right now. The Steelhead Trout on the other hand have been attacking us with vengeance. I’m about sick and tired of them stealing all my frigging Contender Spoons. Man, they seem to really love those things! The down riggers have been really lighting up here lately for us with both those pesky Steelhead and Walleyes with those particular spoons down around 50 ft. or so. Not surprisingly most all of the Walleyes on the riggers seem to make it to the box. The trout on the other hand, well, not so much (insert mad emoji face)! Lol! |
 |
| The Walleyes right now seem to be on a slow, steady march back in towards the south shore as this summer season winds down for us. Something which happens every year about this time of the year. With fuel costing around $5 bucks a gallon this summer, every mile that we don’t have to go out more then absolutely necessary is a big plus for us. The downside is that the boat traffic really gets stacked up when we stop in closer like that. I’m about tired of everyone spotting me and some of the other better charter boats and immediately putting on the brakes and throwing their gear out. Most times right in our way! It’s like, really? You can’t spread out even just a couple of miles? Somebody needs to tell all these nimrods that there's plenty of fish everywhere out there! Some things never seem to change up here, year after year. Deep sigh. |
 |
| So it’s mid August already. The days and weeks continue to fly by. Everyday and everything has become just a blur to me at this point. I can not lie. The few days that I had off last week felt really, really good. It made my mind wander about someday down the not so distant road perhaps where this crazy life style that I lead will become just a memory. Will it be next year? Three years from now? Five years from now? Who really knows. I like to keep everybody guessing. Honestly, I’ll probably be the last one to know even myself. Each year I just press on. But it is truly a exhausting job and it’s really starting to catch up with me after 35 years. By this part of the season I’m so tired of dealing with the seemingly never ending daily rough lake conditions, all the different stupid bugs, all the dink Walleyes, all the dumb rude fellow boaters, all the log jams and the debris back in the river and harbor closer to shore after every friggin little rain that seems to fall anymore. It’s just plain exhausting. I have to chuckle every time I hear someone tell me “you have my dream job captain” Lol! Maybe I do. But even after trimming my season back to just a short five months but still getting up at 2:30am everyday it’s been one long ass “dream”! Haha! Well enough for this weeks rant, I mean fishing report! We’ll see what these next couple of weeks brings us... Capt. Walt Trophy Charters |
(166.137.102.28)