Lake Erie fishing report for the week July 9, 2017: , ,
Fishing Report Posted: July 09, 2017

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Posted by Capt. Walt Ermansons on July 09, 2017 at 12:48:52:

Better fishing on the better weather days. Most of last week was pretty decent in the weather department and as I had predicted, most everyone now has started to ply the offshore waters well beyond the 5 nautical mile mark which traditionally separates what is considered to be“near shore” and what is considered to be“offshore”. The Trophy was the first to stick her nose WELL offshore! On Monday and Tuesday of last week with a flat lake and a smaller 3 man group in for a 3 day trip, we decided to go do some exploring. Leaving the dock just before 4am we made the over 1 hour ride out to the Canadian line to see what lurked out there. And interestingly enough, there seemed to be plenty of Walleye out there already! And guess what else is out there in big numbers? BABY WALLEYES! Holy Cow! Even that far out we experienced plenty of throwbacks in those 2 days. Maybe not anywhere as many as are found in the “near shore” waters but still enough to be real pests. Unreal how many young Walleye are EVERYWHERE in the lake!

We ended up with a rather similar catch out there compared to what we have been catching on most days fishing closer to port. 15 to 20 inchers as the bulk of the catch with the several large fish each day as has been the case most anywhere we have fished this year. After fueling back up on day 2 of this exploratory mission and putting a hundred plus gallons of fuel back into “The Trophy”, I decided well that’s enough of exploring! Lol! Interesting though that the Walleye are out there as well. I suppose if they were all hogs out there, that would have warranted further trips out there whenever the lake allowed but that was not the case. The rest of the week we spent still well off shore gauging by the 5 nautical mile mark as a benchmark but not the insane 20-22 mile one way runs that we made earlier in the week clear to the border. And most everywhere we would go, be it 8 miles out, 10 miles out to 12 miles plus out, the same results. Lots of action but with much weeding, you would end up with the necessary amount of keepers needed on most any given day. Weather permitting. So I guess there’s no real need to go 20 miles. There truly are fish everywhere right now but quite apparently, no large schools of many large Walleye. I guess we all just have to be patient and watch this record hatch of 2015 and strong class of 2014 come into its own.

With it being well into July now and us fishing well offshore as well, aboard “The Trophy” we’ve gone into our full fledged deep water trolling program. All the braided line rods and all Jet Diver rods have been swapped out to all wire line and crank baits. It does not make things any easier however. In fact, now it really sucks to patiently peel off 300 foot plus of line, hook it up the release and feed it out yet another 100 foot out to the planer boards, set the rod down only for it to immediately get loaded up with a undersize Walleye which now takes twice as long to crank all the way back in and then have to do it all over again. Wash, rinse and repeat. Over and over! But out of every few fish or so, we would coax out a keeper. We just keep doing what we have to do this year. But I have really been focusing on getting the Dipsy Diver and downrigger rods into the game just because these other long lines are so time consuming. These shorter rods which are easy in and easy out have been real game savers on most days for us. I can not imagine how much work it would be right now if all you used was the planer boards and all those super long lines! Weeeee Bob! Lol!

OK, a couple of interesting tid bits. While fishing in the shipping lanes out by the Canadian line earlier in the week, I was surprised to see how many Smelts the Walleyes that we boated, including the small Walleyes puked up. Apparently it is quite bait rich out there! They keep eating like that they’ll all be chunky monkey keepers before you know it! Here is a interesting picture of one that a Walleye coughed up just as I netted it. Laying it down right next to the lure that we caught the fish on, notice any similarities? Lol! Also, unrelated but kind of interesting, while trying to get all our gear out in the pre dawn darkness on our second trip out to the Canadian line we got escorted for several miles by a HUGE United States Coast Guard SHIP of some sorts! I watched it for a long time on my radar heading eastbound as I ran but gave it no more thought thinking it was just a barge. I got around it and went a bit further north and got busy fishing when I realized the huge vessel had spun around and was now coming at us dead on! I still wasn’t sure what it was at that point and actually thought it was going to run us over! It got ever so close and then just proceeded to follow us along as we trolled and watched us for about a half hour. At this point you could make out the Coast Guards insignia on the ship. After being satisfied apparently that we truly were a fishing vessel and not some kind of terrorists or drug runners, they finally went about their merry way. Anybody that doesn’t think that our borders even out this way aren't closely watched are WRONG! Not really a fishing related story but I found it interesting that in 31 years of off and on flirting with the border that we were so closely scrutinized by such a large Coast Guard vessel. Well that’s it. Another week in the books. Stay tuned...

Capt. Walt

Trophy Charters





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