Weather

The Henney’s are a repeat group of Ohio Walleye Charter clients from last season; they did very well last year, and were looking for a repeat trip. The weather has been iffy to say the least all spring and today would be no different.  As I arrived at the dock early in the morning. I was met by high water and flooding once again.  The water levels started to go down while waiting on the guys to show; up it was clear to me that once again, we would be fishing in some high winds.  These guys said they wanted to at least get to the end of the channel in East Harbor and see what the lake looked like.

Give it a go

I am glad they talked me into going out.  I could have just rescheduled their Ohio Walleye Charter but it was very fishable where I was headed. The wind was howling as we set gear but South Bass Island created just enough of a break that the waves were less than 2 footers. I started marking fish in a mud line just east of the Monument and set our gear out.  I still planned on running bandits since the water temperature hasn’t reached 60 degrees just yet.  It took a while before we were able to break the ice and land a nice Walleye to get us started for the day.  Then we picked a few more as our trolling line pushed further to the northeast.

Our Trip

We managed to find a small pod of fish out in between Kelley’s Island and South Bass, this has been the same story all spring, so I continued to work that small pod of active fish. We managed to haul in 3 limits fairly quickly with a couple doubles and even a triple on at once.  Then the bite slowed down and it was a slow pick for an hour.  Talking with a few Captain friends of mine we all determined that the pod of Walleye had moved more North East towards Gull Island Shoal.  The move in that direction paid off with some great hauls including a few mid 20” fish.

We wrapped up the crews limit by 130 pm and they asked if we could call it a day.  They told me they had enough of the cold and wind and were ok not trying for the Captains Limit.  I was more than happy to go get warmed up as well.  I managed to catch 3 of my limit as we wrapped up gear to head back towards Marblehead.  It was a great day despite the weather conditions; we finished up with 39 Lake Erie Walleye going for 95 lbs at the cleaners running Bandit crankbaits 65-100 back at 1.9-2.2 mph on the Erie Breeze.  Next years’ trip is already in the making as schedules are getting figured out.