Lake Erie Walleye 2016

[jamesbalog]

Well the 2016 season has officially begun for me, I dipped the V for the first time yesterday morning and the first shakedown trip of the year went pretty well. Only boat issue i had was the mic on the radio wouldn't work.

on to the fishing, we launched out of Catawba State Park around 9am and we were greeted with thick fog, we couldnt see 100 yards. With the fog I didnt want to run to where i wanted to fish so we slowly made our way about a mile west and set lines. Within 5 minutes we had our first fish then went dry. We fished this area for 3 hours waiting for the fog to burn off, it finally started to dissipate around noon and we pulled lines and ran the 6-7 miles to D can where I wanted to fish.

Once arriving at D can the action started to pick up, we caught 7 more walleye in the next 1.5-2 hours then had to leave due to my buddy on the boat having an appointment later in the day. Im sure we could have finished the limit if we stayed.

Rapala dhj12s were the only thing we caught fish on, baits with an orange belly did best. We were running the baits 50-70 feet back and trolling at 1.2mph. Water temp was right at 40 degrees.

The quality of fish was absolutely amazing, we had just shy of a 9lb average after the fish were bled out. biggest fish went 11.4lbs

I feel so lucky to have this amazing fishery right in my back yard.