Another nasty week! I think this lake is testing my patience and will! After a particularly choppy lake the week before, this past week wasn’t a whole lot better. Picking up where I left off in last weeks report where I was fearing that we might loose Monday, Labor Day to rough water, well they were right about the wave and wind forecast but we went fishing anyway. I had a crew in town for a two dayer last Sunday and for that Monday and after cancelling on Sunday due to a very nasty lake, I wanted to at least get them out one day out of their two scheduled dates. So we put on our big boy pants, sucked it up and went for a long bumpy boat ride on Monday. When we arrived the Walleyes were waiting for us and on fire! Using only Dipsys we quickly knocked out 4 limits of Walleye and once again scurried for safe harbor. Tuesday was probably the “nicest” day of the week but far from calm! |
Then the real show started! Wednesday morning a strong cold front settled in over the region and brought in much cooler weather along with stubborn stiff winds that puffed both day and night relentlessly. The cold air aloft spawned two days of waterspouts over the lake that put on a heck of a show! On Wednesday there was a squall line that stayed south of us as we fished further out in the lake that produced one water spout after another. Sometimes there were as many as four dancing on the water at one time! Some were as wide as I have ever seen in all of the summers that I have been fishing up here. I was real happy that we weren't too terribly close although it would have made for better pictures had I been closer! Lol! And as always, the camera just does not do the pictures any justice. In person, it was pretty amazing to see. And it wasn't short lived either. The show lasted all morning! Again, the Walleyes could care less as we were as busy as we wanted to be while watching the show. Limits came easily in several short hours for us. |
Thursday leaving in the dark to try to beat the forecast of building winds thru out the morning, our plans went awry when after running out about 7 miles a narrow band of thunderstorms blossomed out over the lake to the north out of nowhere. If it had been just rain, I would have punched thru it to get up north. But the line was loaded with lightning and again even more water spouts! There was one bolt of lighting that I wish I could have captured on film with a very good camera. The bolt was a particularly massively wide cloud to ground (water) strike with branches of lighting sticking out on both sides of the bolt. And when it lit up the night sky, on both sides of the bolt of lighting was two wicked curling waterspouts that were also touching down that we didn’t even know were there till the stike lit up the night sky for a second! Simply AMAZING and perhaps once in a life time site! After I saw that, we elected to wait it out back at the harbor. 7 miles out for nothing and 7 miles back, 14 miles round trip just to sit it out for about an hour. By the time we got back out there the wind was smoking already and it was a real struggle to get out to the fishing grounds. But we persevered and pushed on and when we finally got out there, it wasn’t only the wind that was smoking! The Walleyes were just silly suicidal. A late departure and still back before noon fully loaded. Not bad! |
Friday, what else. Wind! Another long ride out, easy fishing and a long ride back. It is what it is and if we didn’t fish on the windy days, we would just never fish! Saturday was rough again (it wasn’t supposed to be!) After encountering minor boat engine problems on one engine on the way out, we limped back in about 7 miles on one motor and by the time we got the issue resolved (a couple hours) it was decided that we weren't going to go back out. My aching back gave no argument! So that was my week in a nut shell. Good fishing everyday on a rough lake also everyday. Right now the long range forecast for all of next week looks rather tranquil. I’m not sure if I’m buying into all of that though. With the remnants of Hurricane Irma working it’s way up the interior of the United States, I’d be very surprised if we didn’t get some kind of wrap around effect out of it which usually means a northeaster for us here on Lake Evil, I mean Erie! I guess we’ll know soon enough. Just 3 more weeks. I can do this, I can do this... Capt. Walt Trophy Charters |
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