Fishing Reports & News

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August 31, 2009 (Monday) Travis 

One perch report came in today:

"Fished for perch Fri near Marblehead Loading dock. Caught some nice ones but did not limit. Sat Northwest winds, fished behind South Bass in front of the monument and near Starve Island. Caught a bunch but they were all too small. Still had fun feeding the small ones and white perch my minnows. Would not recommend this spot for keepers."

Travis

August 30, 2009 (Sunday) Travis 

No new reports have come in since Wednesday.  It was a windy weekend.  I doubt that the lake was too busy this weekend.

With this cool summer we're having I'm optimistic that the big fish will be from Lorain to Huron earlier than usual.  The fishing was great in Ashtabula the last few weeks from what I heard.  Hopefully most of the big fish didn't venture much out of Ohio waters and will have a short trip back.

Travis 

August 26, 2009 (Wednesday) Travis 

Three perch reports came in today:

"On Tuesday we caught a four-person limit of nice perch 3-400 yard north of Green in 29’ of water in 3.5 hours. Threw back a lot of 7” and under fish; had quite a few white perch, one SH, no gobies."

"There was a lot of 5-7 inch perch north of Rattlesnake last night, with white perch and drum mixed in. I ended up scrounging up 25, 7-9 inchers by keeping about one out of every 5 or 6 fish. I will look elsewhere next time for a bigger grade of fish. Of the 25, only 5 were bigger than 8" 32 FOW, 5:30-7:30pm."

August 25, 2009 (Tuesday) Travis 

I had a fun day of smallmouth bass fishing today with a co-worker.  We fished up around Pelee Island and ended up landing 9 smallies and had countless others chase to the boat and not hit, or hit and jump and get off.  I would guess that the total number of fish that we saw was well over 20.  The biggest five that we landed were in the 15 pound range, but none of them were over 4 pounds.  I caught 4 on x-rap jerkbaits and the others came drop-shotting with gulp gobies.

Two reports came in today.

"100 perch, 60 degrees off bells, 35'.  Nice fish!" (I assume off Sandusky bell buoy)

"We left the dock at 08:15 and headed for the Toledo Water Intake area as our first stop. Wind was out of the south at 10 knots. Waves were less than 2 feet and water temperature  was 76*F. The Water Intake didn't give up any sizable Perch so we moved four more times. Our second spot produced small White Perch. Moved again to the Gravel Pit and finally got into Perch but they were infants. Finally got into some respectable fish south of the #11 Shipping Channel Buoy at N41* 42.800'/W 083* 16.030'. That is about 600 feet southeast of the buoy on the south side of the Toledo Shipping Channel. The Perch bite didn't start to 10:30. The fish were picking up the minnows on the drop. So you had to keep some tension on the line during the drop to feel the pickup. Later the bite changed to where you had to let it lay on the bottom for a three to five count before doing a lift of the bait. They were "Masters" at stripping you clean! We took a three man limit with quite a few 10.5's, 9's and 8 inchers. Keep a few in the 7.5 inch range also. Finished up at 3:00 PM when the bite began to drop off. Overall. a very good day on the lake."

Travis 

August 24, 2009 (Monday) Travis 

As of 9 this morning I still haven't received any new reports since my last post.  It looks like I'm going to get out tomorrow, but it will be another multi-species trip.

If anything new comes in I'll post it.

Travis

August 17, 2009 (Monday) Travis 

Here are two new reports that came in today:

"Spent Saturday and Sunday within sight of the weather buoy.  Saturday started with Reef Runners and TD11 Tail Dancers for the first hour without a sniff.  Switched to double willow harnesses on 2oz. inlines and started catching.  Ran orange on copper, blue on silver and a funky purple and pink with chartreuse dots on silver.  Leads were 60, 70, and 80 feet.  Hit a bit of a lull around 1:00 and tried Colorados but without much success.  Switched back to willows and finished a two man limit.  Very interesting fishing, some just clobbered the bait and the board went sliding, others hit so soft the board never moved.  Ran the same program on Sunday in the same location but could only manage 7.  Had 3 or 4 get off and probably had 40 pounds of catfish.  All in all, a great weekend with friends and family."

"Managed a 4-person limit of decent perch in 2.5 hours this morning in 29 FOW about 0.3 mile north of Green among 6-8 boats, all of whom appeared to be doing well. Included one 18-20’ walleye, a few white perch, and probably 40 7” and under throw backs."

Travis

August 16, 2009 (Sunday) Travis 

On Friday evening I went walleye fishing for the first time since the Geneva tourney at the end of June.  It also happened to be the second time that I got my 2 year old son out on Lake Erie.  Dad, Max and I went out of Huron around 4:00 and headed over to Ruggles.  We started just off of Ruggles and ended up in 16 to 18' of water on the west half of the reef.  We ended up catching 6 walleye, 1 drum, 1 white bass and 1 white perch in about 2 hours of trolling.  The walleye ranged from 15.5" to probably low 20's (I didn't measure the bigger ones).  Colorado harnesses on 2 ounce inlines 10 to 15' back caught fish, along with reef runners 30' back and a ripshad 50' back.  Our speed was around 1.5 mph and we only caught fish going from NE to SW.  On Max's second trip on the big lake he got into the fishing a little more.  He reeled every fish in (we helped hold the 8' long rod, of course), and he never asked to run the boat around like he did 30 minutes into the first trip.  After two hours he asked to go home, so we started reeling in the lines.  As soon as we got the lines in he looked confused and said that he wanted to fish.  Since it was already dinner time we headed back in not wanting to make it too long of an evening for him.  He liked catching the walleye, but was upset that we didn't catch a catfish or bass, and at one point called the white bass a muskie.  He played with the fish in the livewell, and then decided that he wanted to put them back in the lake.  Besides reeling in fish he found plenty of opportunities to steal drinks of grandpa's Dr. Pepper.  It was truly his first time out fishing with just the guys.

I know that I've mentioned this before, but trips like Friday really bring things back into perspective.  I can't even explain what it's like to see the lake through a two year old's eyes.  It's pretty special to see him get excited because in all reality he doesn't have any idea what's at the end of the line as it's coming in.  It's also immediately apparent that what you catch just doesn't matter.  Walleye are no more important than the big white perch that he caught.  At a minimum any fishing trip with three generations in the boat is priceless.  When you consider that we fished two hours and caught 6 walleye plus some other bonus fish you realize just how great Erie is even in a "down" year.  We were within a mile or two of shore on 90 degree August day and couldn't keep walleye out of the boat in one short stretch of the trip.

OK, on to other reports.  Here is what has come in:

"perch 2 man limit in 2hrs. 60 degrees off sandusky fog horn in 41 f.o.w."

"2 of us fished Sat. (8/15) from NW Reef to 2 miles south of NW Reef in 32 FOW.  Trolled dipsies and the larger Stinger spoons near bottom @ 2.5-3 mph .  Got our limit, but was very slow coming.  Didn't get lines in the water until about 10:30 am; only had 4 keepers at 3 pm then caught 7 in next 1-1/2 hr.  Took almost another hr. to get last one.  Coppermellon and Mixed Veggies worked best.  Had a mix of smaller (16-17") and nicer (18-22") fish."

I got a voice mail from a friend that caught a 3 hour limit of nice perch off of Conneaut.  I'll have to get some more details.

Last, but certainly not least, I got an e-mail from Dean.  Here is part of the e-mail that I think you would all like to see:

"Sue and I are doing well; she is recovering from a stroke back in November of 08. She has all her motor functions back and her memory and vocal skills are nearly back to normal. Personally I just keep getting older and no prettier but I guess that is to be expectedJ."

He also mentioned that he is shutting down his web site since they aren't travelling any more.  He is also not going sell his maps any more.  In true Dean fashion he hasn't lost his sense of humor as he closed the e-mail with this:

"You might post a note telling the folks that the old site will be shut down so they don’t decide I have reached the head of the checkout lane."

Travis

August 13, 2009 (Thursday) Travis 

This evening I decided to do something different and take a multi-species trip.  The first order of business was to target muskie on Lake Erie.  I've never done that before.  I figured with all the incidental catches this year, why not?  Dad and I went up to Kelleys north bay and threw bucktails, spinnerbaits and glide baits at all the weed beds that we could find.  There are a lot of weeds along the NE tip of the island inside the north bay.  The most are right at the base of the NE tip in the SE corner of the bay, but they are spread all the way out to the end of the NE tip in 5 to 10' of water.  We didn't have very good muskie conditions (sunny, hot, dead calm) and we didn't give it very long, maybe an hour or so.  In the end we didn't see a muskie, but I did get waypoints on all the weed beds if I make it back up there another day.

After that we headed out to Gull Island Shoal to try and catch some smallmouth.  I ended up catching 4 channel cats on a drop shot rig with a gulp goby in 15 to 25' of water off the SE corner of the shoal.  We made one last move over to Lucy's Point (Middle Bass).  In the first 5 minutes over there I caught a good smallie that probably would have pushed 4 pounds.  It came from 18' of water on the south side of the point.  We spent another 30 to 45 minutes there without another hook-up.  All things considered it was a fun evening.  It was definitely nice to try something different for a change of pace.  I could get into smallmouth fishing.

One other report has come in since my last post:

"4 of us went out with Tibbels on Sunday. Capt Jim on the Miss Jill did a great job getting us on the Perch. Capt Jim got 12 tickets counting him and first Mate Captain Mike and 10 Fisherpersons.  Water a little rough at the start but the wind laid a little as the day went on. We fished off the South East Side of Kelly’s in 30’ of water in the same spot and took a lot of fish. Many 10 through 13’s. Tibbels treats you right if you are looking for a great Party Boat.  Caught a lot of White Bass and White Perch, some Sheephead and many, many 3” Perch. Should be a lot of Yellow Perch in the years to come from the amount of this years hatch that we took."

Travis 

August 10, 2009 (Monday) Travis 

One good perch report came in today:

Travis 

August 9, 2009 (Sunday) Travis 

Here are two reports that came in the last two days:

"Two man limit  8am to 1:30 pm. Thur. (8/6) near NW Reef in 32 FOW plus three 15”+ throwbacks.  All caught trolling Stinger spoons with dipsies near bottom.  Best speed was around 2.5 mph.  Larger size Coppermellon (both smooth and hammered) caught 11 of the 15 fish.  Largest was 23”, three 20’s and rest were 15-19”.  Not many junk fish.  Tried about 3 miles west of Rattlesnake first; only caught one in that area.  Waves were 1 to 2 ft."

"4 man limit (perch) 60 degees off sandusky fog horn in 41 ft. Friday  8-7-09"

Friday I went up to Lake St. Clair and spent the day casting for muskie with two friends.  I was reminded how tough muskie fishing can be.  We got 6 or 7 follows, but only 1 was larger than 30" and none of them hit.  I did catch two bonus pike, and one was 36.25".  I got to watch him hit near the boat.

Travis

August 4, 2009 (Tuesday) Travis 

Here are the reports that have come in the last two days:

"Friday night went out with two other guys and trolled around the Toussaint reef and  Round reef ,  We were fishing 2oz and 3oz in-line trolling weights with worm harnesses - gold and glow blades. -  50 back of in-line boards - speed was right at 2mph.  Caught 14 in about four hours.  Fish are right on the edges of the reefs and we lost some equipment getting two close - But the fishing is really hot when you stay right off the rock piles and the fish were very good size with only a few throw backs.

Saturday - we tried throwing worm harnesses sitting on top of the Toussaint reef - could not get them going and caught a lot of trash fish - switched to trolling and picked up fish right away - same program as before - ended up with 10 for two guys."

"May or may not be an interest to you, but I know a lot of people like to go to Wheatley for Steelhead and it just hasn't happened this year.  Right now there is a very good Steelhead bite going north of Cleveland and east.  It is a long run out there, but well worth it.  We fished for four hours out there Saturday (started much farther west with no results) and went 11 for 15 with several other knockoff's.  We also landed a few bonus walleye.  Dipsey and spoon program was best for us and we were targeting the 40 foot column of water then.  Down riggers were slow.  The grade of fish is outstanding.  If one is willing to make a 25 mile run, the fishing is excellent right now.  We fished 79 feet of water at the 56 and 42 lines, but I'd recommend a little farther east then 42."

"Three of us Perched from 8:15pm to 9:15pm Thursday 7/30 caught 33 7in of bigger H can. Friday fished D and G can 3 man limit between 1pm and 5pm 7in or larger. Saturday fished D and G can 3 man limit between 8am and 1pm 7in or larger"

Travis 

August 2, 2009 (Sunday) Travis 

I was out of town this weekend, but three reports have come in since last night.

"The wife and I perched for 3 hours Sunday a mile west of Green Island and limited out before 2PM. Most fish were 7 inches but only a couple of sheephead and 1 white perch. 29 FOW."

"Fished due north from Metzger's (Saturday), 9:45 am for two hours, caught 5 'eyes, 16"-21", in 18 FOW.  Parking lot was full, Lake had many fisherman, 2 every three boats were perching.  Flat-lined 130-140 back with gold hot-n-tots, green reef runners, gold ripsticks.  Didn't seem to matter color, fish were being caught by all."

I'm hearing too often that our e-mail report link isn't working.  I'm not sure what's wrong, but if it doesn't work for you just send the reports to my personal e-mail.

Travis