Lake Erie Fishing Report by Capt. Walt Ermansons



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Lake Erie fishing report for the week of September 14, 2014.

A real taste of fall! After a decent beginning to this past weeks weather, we were hit with a dramatic change by Thursday that ushered in some of the chilliest weather since this past early spring. It came in with vengeance resulting in once again Thursday being a lost day as the wind howled and the rain flew. To say that it was an ugly day would be an understatement. Friday we were back out there Walleyeing under a still raw and cool day with a stiff north east wind. Saturday with my seasons first Perch trip scheduled, we took to the water with a rather ominous forecast looming. Small craft warnings were posted to take effect at 11:00 am. With a chilly, rainy and windy start to the day we never even made it till 11:00 am before conditions deteriorated from lousy to life threatening in one of the more dramatic, almost instant shifts in both wind direction and velocity that I have witnessed in a very long time. We pulled anchor and really struggled just to make the short one mile trip back to safe harbor. Wow is all I got to say about that!

The Walleye fishing earlier in the week remained fairly strong all things considered. After a bit of a reprieve with all the junk fish the week before they were back unfortunately as well and we were again working very hard weeding through all of the White Bass and Sheephead just to get our Walleyes. Boy, it’s been a long summer with that problem. Some weeks worst then others, but there is no denying that there is a real White Bass explosion going on lake wide in Lake Erie right now. With our Walleye count on the season at over three thousand Walleyes boated aboard ‘The Trophy” now, I shudder to think how many White Bass I've had to handle this year! Twelve Thousand? Fifteen Thousand? Maybe more! I know on most days we would catch 4 or 5 White Bass for every Walleye that we would box and that is no exaggeration! It was enough to give me nightmares at times.

But when we were not tied up with the junk, we did manage to capture some real beautiful late season plump Walleyes. We even landed a seasons best 13 pounder this past week aboard “The Trophy”! And even though we are still fishing well offshore for our Walleyes and not anywhere near any creeks or tributaries, the Steelhead Trout are starting to become more common in our daily Walleye catches again as well. I think we had Steelhead at least hooked up multiple times on all of our most recent outings and managed to even land one or two most days. Pretty successful trips. Rough water, junk fish and all. And back to my first Perch trip, well that did not go nearly as well. Although we caught 40 or so mostly nice Perch before the weather totally deteriorated on us, it was far from a burn and what we have come to expect when Perching. With the weather as it was there was no pulling of the anchor and go looking around elsewhere. Where we stopped is where we fished. It is what it is and I guess there is nothing you can do about the weather, and that’s fishing, and all that crap blah, blah blah...

So we enter the second half of September now. I believe that I have mostly all Walleye trips still scheduled this coming week until next weekend when we will try our hand again at Perching. The weather looks to be stabilizing somewhat and I don’t see anything exceptionally bad on the horizon. We’ll see. OK, it’s been a while since I've really had many open dates to offer but it’s getting to be that part of the season where my schedule is really starting to lighten up. Although most weekends are taken, we now have some nice blocks of open dates to offer if anyone is still looking for a late season fishing trip. Right now we can still go either Walleye or Perch. Just give me a call. And again last week I mentioned that we were going to start leaving the dock at 5:30 am. Well that’s still too early. I can’t believe how long it’s staying dark now in the mornings already. I’m now telling everyone for this weeks trips to meet at 6:00 am. That about wraps it up for another week. We’ll see what this coming week brings.

Capt. Walt



Source: Capt. Walt Ermansons September 14, 2014 at 07:28:19


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