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Fishing Reports

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Two new reports have come in.  Here is the first one:

"We got 12 on Saturday from 18.5" to 24" and one that was 29.5". 3 oz. bottom bouncer with a  red and white harness 100 feet back and a green and yellow harness behind big dipsys with no ring on a 1.5 setting 60 back at .8 to 1.3 MPH. Eight of the fish including the big one came on the red and white harness.
Sunday we tried out the new downriggers we bought over the winter. We got 6 20" to 24" using a red and white and a gold harness 20 feet back of a ball at 25 feet at 1.5 MPH.  Fished in between Lucy's Point and Middle Island both days."

The other report was from Monday.  10 fish were caught west of "C" can on bottom bouncers with gold harnesses.  It also sounds like there were a ton of white perch.

I'll be out the next few days pre-fishing for Saturday's LEWT.  I'll post a full report on the three days before the weekend is over.

Travis

Decent walleye reports are coming in from the following areas:

E and NE of West Sister Is. on purple or blue harnesses both trolling and drifting.

1 mile E of the Turnaround Buoy of the Toledo Shipping Channel on gold weapons fished near the bottom with half of a worm.

NW of Kelleys Island on harnesses and jet divers (100' back, I'm not sure which size jet) at 1.7 mph.

From Gull Island Shoal to the NW corner of Kelleys Island on harnesses (gold) with inline weights.  2 ounce inlines 40 or 60 back, and also 6 ounce bouncers near the bottom with harnesses.  A few came on 40 Jets 80 or 100' back with spoons.

21 perch were caught by a frequent reporter in 44' of water off of Lucy's Point of Middle Bass Island in 3 hours.  The fish were a good 8.5" grade.

Water temps are around 60 on the surface.

I just got back from a family vacation to Ocean City Maryland.  It was a good time.  I did get a little bit of surf casting in and I caught a small dogfish shark and 4 skates.

Travis

Two reports came in today.  Here they are:

"The fishing Monday, Tuesday and Wednsday deteriorated. The high wind and waves have made the water very dirty. There was a good bite going late last week south east of Rattlesnake and north west of South Bass - in 31 ft of water. Lots of nice fish and a number of Fish Ohio's. Around Kelly's and the Bass Islands the bite has been very slow.
 
There was a bite between Vermillion and Huron - a night bite that trollers were catching fish on, but the water has now muddied. Also, reports are that casters off the Huron pier were taking walleye after dark - very late. If the wind dies down and the water clears up things should get going again, but Thursday's high winds should make for tough fishing for at least another day or two."

"fished Tuesday 5/20, N of bass islands near border. 2 people, 9 walleye, 28 lbs (am). 2-3 ft drift, bottom bouncers & flipping harnesses gold, chartruse blades. Blood Red (red line and hooks caught 4 fish) went flat at 12:30, trolled dipsys 75-100 back with monkey puke 3 fish in 2 hours."

Travis

Reports have been hard to come by lately.  I'm guessing that the weather and gas haven't helped.  Here is the only report that has come in since last Friday:

"Wednesday , Thursday, Friday  - limit catches 1 mile west of West sister island .  I fished the (FLW) on Saturday as a co – angler – we did not do well in the weigh in BUT we did catch the two biggest fish in the tourney (both at 7 lbs)  unfourtanelty they were the only two we caught all day – should have taken those two and made the run for the dinks -22 lb’s won the whole deal – ouch.  Anyway thos big fish were caught in 5 feet of water on husky jerks trolling off of the point down from Fermi; but the key thing here is that planer board was not 20 ft off the shore and that is were we caught both big ones."

Travis

I received one more report from Tuesday.  Here are the highlights:

"Fished Tuesday morning East & also N E of West Sister-good marks no bite-found a few active walleyes NE of West Sister-caught 3 man limit from 11 am till 2:30 pm 18 in to 26 in--trolling slow, slow  with bottom bouncers with harnesses with purple blade, and red-blue-gold-yellow blade. caught a couple spikes--always like to catch them--some made it through the year! the water was pretty clear--but coming in the water was like chocolate milk from West Sister to shore."

Travis

The weather improved yesterday and some of you got out to take advantage of it (I got three reports and that's pretty good for a weekday).  The two walleye reports were from north of Kelleys Island.  One boat drifting bottom bouncers and harnesses caught two walleye and fishing was slow.  A boat trolling in 45' of water south of Gull Island Shoal caught a 3 man 18 walleye limit on harnesses trolled behind Jet30's 85 to 100' back at 1.5 to 2.0 mph.  Any color harness worked and the biggest was around 8 pounds.  The best action was in stained water just south of the clear water.

The third report was from the airport reef on the east side of Kelleys Island.  Two anglers caught 40 quality perch.

Take a look at the satellite photo from yesterday if you get a chance (there is a link on the Denied front page).  The south passage is a muddy wreck, and most of the western basin nearshore waters are very muddy.  The best water is around Gull Island shoal and the west side of the Bass Islands.

Make your own decision based on the forecast, but the offshore wind forecast for Friday, Saturday and Sunday just took a turn for the worse.  Most of the time they are calling for anything from 2-4's up to 4-6's.  It looks much worse than it did a few days ago.  As always it will probably change as the weekend gets closer.

Travis

Two new reports came in today.  Another good report from last Saturday was one of them.  A 3 man walleye limit was caught between North Bass Island and Gull Island Shoal.  Harnesses with pink or purple and gold blades fished behind 2 ounce weights caught the fish with 35, 40, 50, and 60' between the weight and boards (35 was best) at 1.25 to 1.5 mph.

The other report was a rough perch fishing report from yesterday.  A group that usually goes out of Mazurik decide to head out of Dempsey in Sandusky Bay since it was so rough.  They tried spots in the bay and then out around Marblehead and couldn't get them to bite.  It sounds like the weather won.

Travis

After a great report from Saturday (see prior report) three more reports from Saturday have come in with mixed results.  One boat fished harnesses west of Green Island (3 fish), from Green to Rattlesnake Island (0 fish) and near Middle Island (5 fish).  The biggest fish was a 29" fish from near Middle.  Another boat fished SW of Middle Island and caught 5 fish casting weapons on a 15 count with 3/4 ounce of weight.  The five fish weighed 28 pounds and the biggest was 31" and 11 pounds.  The third report fished from Lucy's Point of Middle Bass Island towards Middle Island.  They caught 3 fish, one on a gold harness on a 3 ounce bottom bouncer 75' back, one on a copper confusion reef runner 180' back, and the third on a purpledescent deep tail dancer 200' back.  Their speed was 1.4 to 2.0.

Today it was pretty ugly, but the wind subsided this evening.  I doubt that too many of you were out in the cold, windy rain.

Travis

A great report came in this evening.  A three man limit with a 5 pound average was caught today between Rattlesnake Island and Put-In-Bay (South Bass Island).  One was 31" and 11 pounds.  Most were caught on dipsys 70' back with crawler harnesses.  That says to me that a good group of post-spawn fish were moving through the channel between Middle Bass and South Bass on their way east or north.  It's only a guess, but that area can be great at times in May as fish spread out after spawning.

Travis

There hasn't been a single report this week.  I think a combination of questionable weather with sky rocketing gas prices has kept people home.  I'm not sure when I'm going to be out again, so please send reports when you make it out.

Based on the nearshore forecast the temperature is 56 off of Toledo and 50 off of Cleveland.

Travis

A good report from Sunday came in and it has a lot of information, so here's the report in full:

"Two of us fished out of Fox Haven yesterday (Sunday).  Fished in 36-39 FOW from about 8:30 to 3:45 up by the Canadian line just South of Middle Is. between N. Bass and Kelleys.  Got 12 really nice walleye.  The smallest was 18” and the rest were 20” and above.  Biggest two were 25” and 26”.   All were caught trolling crawler harnesses real slow just off the bottom.  7 of the 12 were caught on a one bottom bouncer with a single silver blade 2 hook harness trolled about 100’ back.  Other 5 were caught on harnesses with gold or other color blades trolled behind dipsies.  Speed was too slow to register on my GPS.  8 HP kicker motor was at idle speed most of the time.  Fish were scattered.  Almost all were caught going with the waves from W to E.  Despite the windy forecast, it turned out to be a beautiful day on the Lake with only a foot or two waves.  Laid down to almost flat in early afternoon and the bite slowed.  Went a little further E of Middle Is. in the shallower (36 FOW) and picked up the last 4 there.  Was a very enjoyable day."

Travis

Dad and I had a good day yesterday for the second LEWT tournament with another sixth place finish.  The day really started out slow, but we slowly picked up some nice fish through the early afternoon and ended up just over 31 pounds.  Our biggest was just over 7 pounds, but we only had one of our five that was under 6 pounds.  We ended up fishing the border from North Bass Island to directly north of Lucy's Point (Middle Bass Island).  On the day of the tournament we landed 11 fish, all on worm harnesses.  We used inline weights and our best set-up had the harness 60' behind the board with either 1 or 1.5 ounce snap weights clipped on the line 20' in front of the harness (40' between the weight and the board).  We were able to keep our speed from 1.0 to 1.3 trolling with our bow mount Minn Kota Terrova.  The most consistent harnesses had size 6 gold colorado blades with either purple tape or purple and red tape, and chartreuse beads.  Similar harnesses with purple beads caught a few fish.  The day of the tournament two of our weigh fish came on a size 7 fluorescent green blade with a piece of purple tape and chartreuse beads.  One thing that we did a little different on the day of the tournament was fishing a 4 ounce bottom bouncer flatlined off the corner of the boat for part of the day.  We figured that the weather changes might push them down and we caught a few good fish on that rod.

Thursday was the best day of the three (Thurs/Fri/Sat).  On Thursday morning we set up on the line north of Lucy's Point and trolled the line to North Bass.  On the west half of the pass we really did well and had over 33 pounds with our best 5 in about an hour or so.  The biggest was 10.25 pounds and 29.5".  All but one came on the same set-ups mentioned above, the other hit a pink lemonade reef runner 35' back.  I really think that we could have gone over 40 pounds if we had worked the area, but since we were pre-fishing we kept on going.  We fished the Middle Bass shoreline drop-off around Lonz's winery in 25 to 30' of water and caught some nice fish, enough to upgrade our best five to over 35 pounds, but all the fish there were under 6 pounds.  The last area that we fished was the channel between North Bass and Middle Bass.  The marks were good at the two ends of the channel, but we only managed one missed hit.

Friday was frustrating with the storms.  We only ended up making two passes over our best spot on the line east of North Bass.  We caught a few decent fish and lost a big one, but it wasn't anything like Thursday or Saturday.  It was bad enough that it had me wondering whether or not we should fish there during the tourney.

The tournament was won SE of Kelleys Island and many of the boats fished N of Kelleys Island.  The Siberts set a new LEWT record with a fish over 14 pounds.  Great job Tom and Tommy!

Travis