Biggest fish of the season! For no apparent reason, the big Walleyes decided to bite for us aboard THE TROPHY this past week! Tuesdays catch was the biggest rack of fish that I hung this whole year. Our top 5 Walleyes measured a even 31” inches, a 29 5/8”, a 29 1/2” a 29 1/4”, and a 27 1/4” incher! A potential winning bag in most any tournament on Lake Erie where you check in your top 5 fish at the end of the day. The only thing different that we did that day was troll into a very sloppy heavy head sea dead out of the south where I really struggled to control the boat speed. The boat speed was surging from 3 mph to almost 0 at times as we hit the steep oncoming waves. All the big fish came on the Dipsys and whatever we were doing, the big girls liked it!
Tuesday wasn’t the only day that we got some big Walleyes although that was the most that we got in any one trip last week. We even got a couple few really nice Steelhead thru out the week! The Walleyes continue to slide in a bit shallower with each passing day it seems like and the trout are mixed right in there with them. All the Walleyes we’ve been catching in recent days are just gorging themselves like crazy on good sized Smelt. I suspect the Walleyes and Trout both are chasing the same large schools of bait fish. If they keep eating like they are right now, we are all in for a treat next year! The growth rate has to be simply nuts. At one point I questioned if that many Walleyes in the lake right now all had enough to eat but it sure hasn’t seemed to be a problem here in the last couple of months for them.
The weather this past week was more summer like then fall like. We added several more 90 degree days to the list. Unfortunately, some of those hot days came in with stout south winds. None of it was enough to keep us off the lake and as I had mentioned earlier, may even have contributed to triggering some of the bigger Walleyes into biting! As I look at next weeks forecast and beyond, it seems crazy nice! The local Cleveland weather cast says no rain at all for like 8 days with mostly sunny conditions! Wow! I’ll take it but I’ll believe it when I see it. Hopefully they are indeed right as I got a bit of a run of trips coming up here in my last hurrah. Maybe this is the bang that I was hoping to go out on as my final couple of weeks wind down.
Speaking of which, next weeks fishing report/ blog will be my final one of the 2019 season. Although I will be fishing for yet another week after that one posts, the weekend there after will be a extremely busy one for me as we run our last trips and then bust our butts to get everything on both the boat and camper cleaned up, winterized and closed up. Lots and lots of unloading, moving things around and many other loose ends that will require all of my and my wife's attention. So check back next week for some parting words and a final wrap up of yet another fabulous season. “Just another year aboard THE TROPHY”...
Capt. Walt
www.trophycharters.com
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