The walleye and yellow perch bite in Lake Erie's Western Basin is excellent right now! I went fishing this weekend for walleye and yellow perch, resulting in good catches of both, along with nice weather...although Saturday was a little bumpy with 3-5 foot waves.
Fished Saturday north of Pelee Island in 36 f.o.w., for Yellow Perch and it was one of the best yellow perch trips I've had all seaon! We caught our Canadain limit of yellow perch, 50 per person, with 6 fisherman. We had 7 Jumbo Yellow Perch over 13 inches, 2 of which were over 14 1/2 inches. Most of our yellow perch averaged 10-12 inches and we had over 105 pounds of perch, once they were weighed at Szuch's Bait & Fish Cleaning, in Curtice, Ohio. After they were machine scaled & buttery filleted, which only took 45 minutes by the way, we had a whopping 43 pounds of butterflied fillets. Without a doubt...Yellow Perch are one the very finest of all fish there is to eat!!
One of my guest's pulled the five largest yellow perch out of the cooler and was taking them to his taxidermist to have mounted on a stringer. They were 13 1/4 to 14 1/2 inches in length. Giant yellow plumpkins!
Sunday I fished Chickenolee Reef and Mill Point Reefs for walleye. We caught 36 walleye in 4 hours, casting gold bladed, 1/2 oz. weapons, on a "horizontal sweep & stop" They averaged around 3-5 pounds. Although we caught them on Colorado & Indiana gold blades....some smooth and some hammered....the best blade without a doubt was a gold willow blade, with a green "slash" of green prism tape on the side. These weapons had chartruse beads on them.
At the Szuch's Bait store, while we were waiting for our walleye to be filleted, I ran into my good walleye friend and FLW pro walleye fisherman, Rick LaCourse. He shared with me that he had fished with several friends earlier in the day...off of Vermilion and that they had caught their limit as well...using a "program" of pulling harnesses with spinners, running Colorado blades on inline weights. They used 1oz 20 back, & 1 oz 30 back were the best leads, as well as 2 oz 45,30,35 also took fish so did a 69 back, Chartruse beads worked the best. GPS 34 / 23 lines.
There you go boyz...some current "hot spots" and "how to" catch 'em information. It is well worth the trip....trust me!
For anyone interested, Rick LaCourse, Juls Davis, and a whole buch of other great walleye folks...are putting on the Walleye Central "Get Together" this coming weekend, Oct.25 & Oct. 26, in Huron, Ohio. Here is a "Link" with more information on that, Walleye Central "Get Together" [url]http://www.walleyecentral.com/get_together.shtml[/url]
Enjoy!!
Capt. Rick Millette
[url]http://www.eriequest.com[/url]
