4-22-22 Lake Erie Walleye Report
Launched out of Fenwick Marina around 7am. We were greeted with a stiff NE wind blowing 15 mph plus that had the waves rolling on the west end of the lake. This made everything more difficult but we made the best of it. Since we hadn't been able to get out much yet this spring due to the wind, we had to at least try! Found some nice colored water for jigging and got the spinning rods out. Caught a few pretty quick in 20' of water. Getting the drift speed slowed down was difficult, but we made it work. Since we had some upcoming charters, we decided to leave the jig fish and go scout for some offshore trolling fish. It was a long wet ride to make us realize we didn't want to proceed all the way to the offshore waypoints. It was just not fun at all in the conditions and boat control was difficult, so we turned back to the jigging grounds where we had found some eater male walleye. We scanned around the area we fished earlier and found a few scattered walleye on bottom and started to drift. Two drift socks and occasionally using the trolling motor kept our speed manageable at .5-.8 mph. When we jig Lake Erie we typically try and keep our drift speed around .5 mph. We were hitting .8 mph when thrown by big rollers, but the fish were still chomping. We instantly started catching fish once we got the speed down and lines in the water. In an hour we filled out our limit and had a blast! John Deere Green 3/4 oz Venom Jigs tipped with Gulp Alive were our #1 jig by far. Tried 3 other colors and that one was killing it by a long shot. We also used the 2'' removable stingers and they were the ticket early when the fish were short striking. Casting and hopping the jigs back to the boat was much more productive for us compared to jigging over the rail. This is our favorite way to jig fish. Most of the time they hit on the upstroke of the jigging motion and you just turn it into a hookset! BAM! Fish-ON! No big fish today. All eater size males and they were all "milking". Biggest fish was 20'', just the typical reef male jigging season walleye. The bite between 9am-10am was FANTASTIC! They were inhaling the jigs. The first few we caught in early morning were caught on the stinger hooks. Hopefully the wind cooperates for tomorrow's trip. Good luck to everyone this weekend!
