Veteran captain hooks monster walleye

[Spiel]

Veteran captain hooks monster walleye

 

 

January 11, 2009

Will Elliott / www.buffalonews.com

 

 

Lake Erie charter captains see many sizeable fish while working eastern-basin areas of this great lower Great Lake for walleyes.

 

Bob Rustowicz cruised that chartering circuit for more than two decades, trolling likely walleye waters from Buffalo to Barcelona and using the VHF handle “Forever Fishin’.” Excitement was always high when he and his clients hooked into limit catches, often with monster ’eyes weighing in well over the 10-pound mark.

 

Despite all this time spent netting nice Erie ’eyes, his excitement level was that of a kid with his first big bass, trout or salmon when he called Wednesday evening after returning from an ice-fishing outing in the Big Bay area of the Bay of Quinte at the northeast corner of Lake Ontario east of Toronto.

 

“Capt. Bob” and partner Tony Zogaria, both of Cheektowaga, hauled in some nice walleyes during their two-day stint on Quinte ice.

 

“We weren’t getting any big fish but a lot of nice ones up to about seven pounds, and I saw a couple others [walleye] that might hit 10 pounds,” Rustowicz said of the fishing and catching going on before he hooked into the biggest walleye of his fishing lifetime.

 

Bay of Quinte walleye schools had been the darling of summer and winter anglers decades ago. The Lindner brothers, Babe Winkelman, and other anglers in the national media focused many a camera lens on bull-sized ’eyes — mainly monster female walleye — caught through Quinte ice in the 1980s and early 1990s.

 

Fishing pressure and changing fishery conditions there saw a decline in both numbers and sizes of ’eyes for more than a decade. But those conditions have improved in recent years. Ask Rustowicz.

 

Included in the two-day limit catch he and Zogaria brought home Wednesday afternoon was a walleye taken on Tuesday.

 

“It went 13.95-pounds on a digital scale late Wednesday, so it’s definitely a 14-pounder,” Rustowicz said of his 32-inch massive mount-worthy monster. “That one will definitely go on the wall,” he said of his personal-best walleye.

 

The Lake Simcoe pack has been plagued with a run of runts in recent years, but the dink-to-keeper ratio has moved in favor of keeper numbers at the start of this ice fishing season. Ask Gene Borowicz of Cambria and John Ashe of Pendleton.

 

Borowicz and Ashe booked a two-day trip with Steve Barber of Steve’s Fish Huts at Pefferlaw last week, and the duo did well on 10-inch-plus perch both days. “The bite was constant all morning till night. We released more than 300 and kept 85 [larger ones],” Borowicz wrote. He noted the perch moved in tighter schools during afternoon hours, but the bite was solid all day.

 

“They’ve been doing best on live minnows, but the jack/J-hooks [small, spoon-blade baits] also work well now,” Barber said of the past week’s perch catching.