A pretty good week! As I speculated towards the end of my report last week, it was indeed a rather tranquil week. Weather was a non-issue for a change. With the calmer seas, “The Trophy” was able to do a little exploring and take a look at some different water almost everyday. My conclusion is that there simply is no mother load out there. Not yet anyway. The further out you go, the thinner everything becomes. Even the White Bass and babies thin out big time. What remains is a thinly spread nearer to shore bunch of Walleyes that still range from as shallow as 35 foot to about 68 foot of water. Or as the National Weather Service calls it, the “near shore waters within 5 nautical miles of shore” That’s still an awful lot of water to try and cover and the Walleyes are spread rather thin throughout. You just have to put your time in, cover a lot of ground with a lot of baits in the water, sort through all of the junk fish and millions of baby Walleyes AND with a little bit of luck, you end up with racks of fish such as these!
I was treated to my visit from my Iowa boys for their annual three day fishing trip on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this past week. Wednesday is always a shorter day as they always want to get a start for home a bit earlier. I get a real kick watching young Jaedon who’s skills could pass for a first mate literally grow up on my boat from year to year. Jaedon wrote a note to me 5 or 6 years ago which I put up and is still up on my testimonial page on my website. We’ve really had some great trips together over the years now. For their efforts this year, they took home 55 Walleyes and a bonus Steelhead Trout! A nice haul especially with Wednesday being a shorter day. I’ve been blessed this season to have had many multiple 3-4 day trips already. I love it! Everybody knows what to do, there is no anxiety or bazaar expectations on anybody's part. And all of these groups so far have been returning guests from past years. It’s like taking your buddies out fishing! All of my multiple day trips this year have all had good luck and nice big hauls to take back home. That got me to thinking as I watched all those fillets get bagged up. What is the value of a successful charter or charters?
A fishing charter should NEVER be judged only by just the poundage of fish caught. It should always be something very special. Doing something that most might only do once a year. Spending quality time with family and friends. Away from work, maybe troubles at home, or any other of the usual grinds that life may throws at us. Seeing Mother Nature at her very greatest and sometimes, not all so great. Still all a memory though. Every outing is always different. But when things do come together and you also leave with a big haul of fresh Lake Erie Walleyes, on top of the full day of fun that you’ve had and those memories that you have made, what exactly is the value of what you have in those coolers as you leave and head for home? I went online in the “pretense” of wanting to buy some “fresh Lake Erie Walleye fillets”! What I found was amusingly unbelievable! I have seen it at times locally in the stores anywhere from $14.99 a pound to $17.99. And that’s always with the skins on them! I know one of my groups from earlier in the year that fished three days with me left with well over a hundred pounds of perfectly skinless, boneless fillets! Take a look a look at the above screenshot and do a little simple math! Simply amazing. And these fillets are always skinless and GUARANTEED fresh! Something you can never be quite sure of when buying store bought fish!
Friday was the gem of the week for us aboard “The Trophy”. Faced with a group of 5 that I was TALKED INTO doing lol, I set out with thoughts of “well we’ll be lucky to catch 24”. Fishing in the “near shore waters within 5 nautical miles of shore”, we started out rather slow. Then the lake chopped up a bit and like somebody flipped a switch, it was GAME ON! It ended up being our biggest day yet this year beings I had to catch 5 limits of keepers. All that and we were back before noon for lunch! It don’t get too much better then that! We did nothing different really. We beat around the same waters we’ve been fishing. Pulled the same lures and set ups. We just got a bit lucky and ran into a few more actively feeding fish that day. It never hurts to be in the right place at the right time! And the pile of fillets that these boys took home? Well, lets just say their charter was pretty much FREE!
Capt. Walt
Celebrating Our 30th Season
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