Wash rinse & repeat, groundhog day, déjà vu, same ole same ole... I’m just running out of ways each week to describe the awesome “rut” that we are stuck in! Every day is just like the day before. Day after day of simply great Walleye fishing and limit catches! Even the weather seems to be stuck in a rut here the last few weeks! We have nice hot weather for the first half of the week followed by a trailing “cold” front that cools things back down a bit for a couple days or so. And of coarse which is always accompanied by stinking wind. This week was no exception.
Wednesday morning we departed the dock at 5am in the full fledged darkness and were the first boat out as we most often are. With the powerful LED’s blazing our path forward and all the electronics safely guiding our way I was dismayed to see a large rain cell hovering just off of Ashtabula showing up on my Sirius live Doppler radar weather feed on my big Raymarine multi screen. Not seeing any lighting in it we proceeded to punch thru it. The lake was just like a mirror. Dead flat but it wouldn’t stay that way! When we got under the rain, it was surreal! I believe it was the hardest downpour I’ve ever been in with the boat. The rain came straight down and it just couldn't come down any harder! It was actually pretty cool traveling thru it with all the lights and I made a little video of it that I so wish I could post. Although the GPS was showing that we were doing 16 mph, it seemed like we were frozen in some kind of suspended animation with the memorizing rain in the lights and the dead flat lake spotted with millions and millions of dimples from the sky's opening up overhead. Pretty wild!
The thrill of the rain show on the flat lake was short lived. As soon as we got on the other side of the rain cell we were greeted by a wall of wind and rapidly deteriorating lake conditions. We went from a dead flat lake to solid 4 footers along with a occasional 5 footer rolling in from the northeast in a matter of minutes! Wow! That’s exactly how fast little boats can get themselves in big trouble. Lake Erie can turn on a dime! We proceeded a few more miles and went to work in all the slop. But as I stated in the beginning of this weeks report, the fishing was really good as it seems to be everyday regardless of conditions. Thursday morning the wind and waves were a little more easterly but equally stinky crapola. After a long boat ride out we went to work and knocked out our fish in pretty decent time. It seemed like it took longer to travel to the fishing grounds and back home again then it did to get our fish! Ha!
So the fish are still well offshore. They certainly are eating good out there! Everyday the Walleyes that I am netting out there are spewing all kinds of bait including lots of Smelt! Here is a interesting picture of a fresh one that a Walleye had in his mouth when I went to unhook it. Notice any similarities? Lol! They are feeding machines out there right now and with them eating as well as they are, they should be getting really fat as fall rapidly approaches. September always seems to yield us some of our heaviest boxes of the year! Ok, last week I mentioned that I have August the 28th and the 30th available. Well, they are still open dates should anyone be looking. OK that about does it for me for another week. Stay tuned...
Capt. Walt
www.trophycharters.com
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