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| Steady as she goes! Once again, Walleye fishing for us aboard THE TROPHY off the port of Ashtabula remains just about the same as it has been all this past month. Just a slow steady pick. Somehow, someway on most days we manage to get into the lower double digits for Walleyes captured. I am beginning to think that I am the King of the DOZEN! We’ve had more days this month where we caught about 12 Walleyes on each outing out then I ever remember. This Saturday we managed 19 Walleyes but it seemed like earlier in the month it was always 12, 12, and 12! Maybe I should just start running two man charters! Ha! Actually, that’s been the saving grace for me. I only run small up to 4 man highly personalized trips anymore as it is and this past week I was blessed with 3 man trips 6 out of 7 days! Nice! Rather then split the action 6 ways as most charters would have to do on these slower then we would like it days, my guys got to land about 4 Walleyes each. And they didn’t have to split the fillets 6 ways either! The other saving grace for us has been that each day out we have captured some real monsters! Just this week alone we landed 3 Walleyes over 30 inches and several over 29 inches. Wow! And still not a single throw back! |
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| I am running out of ideas to try. I guess all of us out east here have to just patiently await for some migrating Walleyes to move in from who knows where to join up with these local fish that I have been playing with for about a month now. There's Walleyes out there now and there has been. No doubt about it. Just not in the huge numbers that we would really like to see. I’ve tried fishing east of the harbor, west of the harbor, in close, further out... It’s about the same everywhere I go. Just one here and there most everywhere I try and no matter what technique that I use. I guess the very best program for us everything considered has been the Jet Divers and little Stinger Scorpion Spoons way out on the big planer boards. No big surprises there. It’s what we always use early in the year. This should work for everyone for most all of June too. Maybe longer this year considering the slow start to our season out east here. Water temps are still way off for this time of year compared to other years. Blame it all on our very chilly and rainy spring this year. Boo! |
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| We did have some real excitement this past Wednesday when a very rare Chinook Salmon for around here at least decided to hit our #2 Dipsy. I had a shallow lipped Husky Jerk on the diver about 70’ ft. back when the beautiful fish hit it. It immediately peeled off 30’ some feet of line with the clicker and drag set! I just love that screaming sound! After a few flops on the surface and yet another small run, the fellow on the rod expertly reeled it in to the awaiting net and I easily sweeped it up for him. The whole time I thought it was just a big Steelhead. But after seeing the black mouth and the forked tail and other obvious features easily distinguishing it from a Steelhead Trout I realized right away that we had caught a Salmon! Cool! It should be great fixed on the grill or done in the smoker! Mmmmm! In 32 years of chartering and running trips almost everyday in season, that only makes 7 or 8 Kings that we have caught aboard THE TROPHY. Always a real thrill tying into something that is not all that common such as a Brown Trout or Coho Salmon. We’ve actually caught a lot more of some of these other exotic species then Chinooks or as some would call them, King Salmon. Truly a rare treat for this area! |
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| So its Memorial Day weekend. The weather appears to have FINALLY broke into real summer like patterns. There are now more and more boats out there fishing and the rest of the Ashtabula charter fleet is slowly coming to life. It will be nice to finally have some help out there. We all work pretty well together and word gets out pretty fast about who caught what and where. There's a lot of water out there and trying to stay on top of everything when you are the only one fishing is a pretty tall order. With the nicer weather warming the water rapidly now and us turning the page to June with lots of others also helping to look, we should have a good bead on these fish real soon. If we get even just some of these western basin fish to move on out east here it should really be game on! Not that it has been all that bad already. We are catching fish! But as most anglers usually do, we always want more and better! Lol! OK, as I mentioned here a couple weeks back, I still have this coming Wednesday May the 30th available for a Walleye charter. The upcoming weather this week looks to be really GORGEOUS and I sure would like to fill this date if anybody is looking for a trip or knows anyone that is. If not I guess I’ll just go ahead and rest up. I’ve already had a pretty good run at it this month and feel very blessed. Thanks to everyone that has already come out to fish with us. Lets see what this coming week and the new month brings us. Happy Memorial Day everyone! Capt. Walt www.trophycharters.com |
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