Lake Erie walleye too busy to bite

[Spiel]

Lake Erie walleye too busy to bite

Spawning takes precedence over artificial lure, wiggling minnow

 

 

Friday, April 18, 2008

Steve Pollick / toledoblade.com

 

 

It gets a fisherman's blood boiling to be drifting across the near-shore western Lake Erie reefs in April, twitching a hair-jig and a minnow while watching hordes of spawn-crazed walleye splashing around the boat, oblivious to the angler's offerings.

 

That is just the way it was this week off Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station. It was a mite windy at midweek, the water still too muddy but clearing. The walleye didn't care.

 

Several times during a morning's angling, huge female spawners could be seen rolling and swirling on the surface, each followed by a pack of four or five eager males, their snouts occasionally poking at the female's flanks.

 

"The fish are stacked in here thick," said Jerry "Meatpole" Meyers Sr., skipper of the Water Witch. He reflected on the spotty catching as well. "It's been so dirty. But it's getting better every day." All the rain and snow of last winter, Meyers added, have added 18 inches to two feet to the lake level - a good thing.

 

Ron Lamont, a Wing Wings Marina skipper like Meyers, was taking a busman's holiday from his Sun Chaser to accompany Meyers' crew. "I think we're at least two weeks behind," he said. He added that he would not be surprised if the normal spring transition to familiar spinner-type rigs with nightcrawlers does not occur later than normal, perhaps mid-May.

 

Lamont added that he never has seen so much debris in the lake, from whole, 60-foot trees to railroad ties. So beware and keep a sharp lookout when piloting around the western basin.

 

So much for the scenery.

 

The walleye are running very nice, from three to four pounds on up, with nine and 10-pounders not uncommon, at least for now. The bigger fish no doubt will wander off in search of food later. So far, it is not "fish-a-minute" action, like it can and likely soon will be.

 

Then the fish may be so eager you won't have to bother with minnows. Dan Tucker, skipper of Erie Sport, was trying the no-minnow jigging on Meyers' boat this week with less than write-home success. We called him the conservationist.

 

Other crew members, Steve Hathaway, of Port Clinton, and me, stuck to the jig-and-minnow script and were not disappointed.

 

One slight disappointment was watching the herring gulls occasionally descend upon and peck to death some spawned-out female walleye. The fish could be seen wallowing on the surface, exhausted from their egg-dropping efforts.

 

"They [the gulls] peck holes in them, right behind the gills," Meyers explained. Eventually, the battered and torn fish will sink to the bottom. It is not pretty, but it's life, and death, in nature. Fishermen know that and the public needs to understand that uncompromising lesson.