Several really great days, and several slower days. It’s almost like, well... FISHING! The weird year that we are all dealing with here on Lake Erie continues. Aboard “The Trophy” this past week we had pretty much more of the same ole, same ole that we all have been dealing with all this summer. There are fish here, there and nowhere. We do very well one day and then struggle the next. You just have to go fishing and hope for the best I guess. I get calls and texts each week from friends and other captains wanting to know “where's the best place to go tomorrow”? And I honestly haven’t had any really good answers for any of them! How can I give out good sound advise when I really don’t know where I want to go myself the next day?
One of the reasons for the tougher days again this past week was all weather related. Wednesday, and especially Thursday and Friday were real butt kickers! Nice sunny days but 3-5 footers with even bigger seas later in the day about quitting time each day. Really limiting our choices as to where we fished and certainly whether we turned on the fish after we caught a few. Just not ideal conditions to work with especially when the pockets of fish are fewer and further between like they have been this whole summer. I actually was starting to feel beaten down and wishing that I had cancelled a couple of those days. But that’s not what my guys that had waited a whole year to fish with me again wanted to hear. So I sucked it up and put fourth my best effort even though I really didn’t want to be there. Nobody got sick, we caught fish even on the tough days and still caught in the upper teens for numbers once again and everyone wants to come back again next year. I guess you can’t ask for more then that after the lake throws you a series of crapola days.
“The Trophy” got a chance to roam around a couple of days as far out as 18 mile from the harbor in the ongoing relentless search for the big schools. Though there are some fish out there that far, I personally didn’t find it much better that far offshore as some of the nearer to shore waters that we have been plying the last few weeks. Just a long fuel guzzling, body punishing day in the choppy seas. I personally hope that we don’t find them that far out this year. Nobody wants to start doing daily 20 mile runs like we did for a big portion of last summer. But time will tell. As always, I will go wherever I hear or feel the bite is the very best. However reluctant I am to go. That’s just my job.
So it is indeed now past the halfway point of July. We are catching nice Walleyes everyday as we have been all along but it is not any more consistent or any easier then back in mid May when I started this year off in Ashtabula. We all still have high hopes of huge schools and easy limits everyday but reality is starting to set in with me that it might not be so this year. It’s been so good the last handful of years that it should come as no great surprise to anyone that we might have a slower year. Maybe we get through this year we will all be rewarded with crazy good Walleye fishing for years to come judging by the amount of undersize Walleyes that everyone is catching and throwing back this year. Not a bad thought to hang your hat on. But for now and at least this summer, the search for the Mother Load around here goes on!
Capt. Walt
Celebrating Our 30th Season!
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