Lake Erie fishing report for the week of September 23, 2018.: , ,
Fishing Report Posted: September 23, 2018

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Posted by Capt. Walt Ermansons on September 23, 2018 at 13:11:22:

Limits! Limits! Limits! Here we are with only about a week to go in September and pretty much the end of my schedule and the 2018 season and Walleye fishing is still as good as it could possibly be. It has not been a question if we will limit out but how quickly and where. The quick has depended on our departure time and the lake conditions. The best bite just as it has been all season is right at the break of daylight. We like to have our lines set in the last moments of darkness and as the dawn of morning breaks, total PANDEMONIUM! It also seems like our biggest fish of the day more times then not comes in the wee hours of the morning. It’s my personal very favorite time of day when it comes to fishing! Lake conditions always dictate how quickly and how far out we are going to have to go as well. With a north wind we crank it way out and troll back with the wind and waves. That take a lot more time (and fuel!) With a south wind, we stop way short and troll our way out. Of coarse the preferred conditions is no wind or very light breezes where we can troll in any direction. We can really fly out to the hotspots fast on a flat lake and we don’t have to go long or short. We go right to the heart of the mother load where I felt that we did the very best the day before and go right at it.

This past week right up till Friday was picture perfect weather wise also helping to make fishing easy for us. And the fish are still out here in unprecedented numbers. That really helps! Lol! Although there are some Walleye everywhere, when you get into the thick of the juggler vein of the mother load school it’s plain stupid how fast the fishing has been. Even now, the end of September when in years past Walleye fishing was getting tough because the schools had already started to migrate back out of the area. But even if the fish are on the move now, the schools are so vast that as they move out of the area others by the millions I am assuming are coming through as well making it appear seamlessly that the fish are going nowhere. Whatever the case may be, there's still plenty of fish out there and they are really putting on the feed bag for the fall and winter months. They are so much nicer then the ones on average that we were catching early on in June when they finally turned on for us (or arrived, whatever the case may be). Nice plump good eaters! I mentioned earlier right up to Friday we had great weather. Friday & Saturday, not so much as we had yet another two days of 30 mph winds which shut the fishing down once again for another 2 days. Seems like for the last month or so we can’t get through a single week without a couple days of serious show stopping winds. Ugh!

Aboard THE TROPHY we are basically only fishing six Dipsy Diver rods every day that we do get out. And we can barely keep up with those! We have not put the planer boards out in well over a month now. NEVER in all of the years that I’ve been chartering have we ever attempted to run any trips with such limited amount of rods! By mid summer I was blown away with the fact that we didn’t have to run wire line rods off the planer boards. Now we don’t even run planer boards period! The Dipsys are soooooo very nice! Easy in and quickly right back out. None of that running the wire line and crank bait out 350 feet, hooking it up to a release and then running it out yet another 150 feet off to the side of the boat out to the planer. I haven’t had one guest this latter part of summer tell me, “gee we really miss cranking these fish back in from 500 some feet back!” Ha! And the same spoons that I put on there early on in the season, well their still on there. Over a hundred days straight now. Same exact 6 spoons on the same exact Dipsys. No need to change lures or colors or anything. These guys (and I still hear it everyday unbelievably) that say they only could get them on this color today or that they were really picking out this one particular color, well it just plain cracks me up! I probably own and with no exaggeration, well over several thousand Walleye lures and I use the same exact 6 spoons every day! Go figure.

So this is just about the end of the line for me. Next weeks fishing report will be my final report for this year. It will be the end of the month and for all practical purposes, the end of my season. Although I plan on keeping the boat in the water perhaps another couple of weeks if the weather holds, I am just about out of trips so there will be no further fishing reports. If anybody wants to take a chance on a late season Walleye charter with me though, I have plenty of dates available the first couple of weeks of October to choose from. I don’t even need much notice. If you see that the weathers going to be nice for a few days, give me a call and come up and get one more load for the old freezer! I am pretty sure that there will still be plenty of Walleyes around. Late season is always pretty sweet. There is practically no other boats out there and the quality of the fish is as good as it has been all season. And if not, I’ve had a good run at them. No complaints. OK, this coming week which is my last big hurrah appears like its going to be a real roller coaster with the wind forecast out on the lake. Not sure what's going to happen at this point. I sure hope they are wrong or we may do more sitting then fishing this coming week. We’ll have to see how it all plays out and as always, it is what it is. Till next week for one final time...

Capt. Walt

www.trophycharters.com





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