Wildwood Woes 7/19/08

Headed out bright and early this morning for some more trolling practice. The weather has been hot lately, but stable and allowed me to take my own 18 foot Crestliner Canadian out on Lake Erie. Gotta love the 2 foot or less wave forecasts.

Anyway, I've trolled Erie quite a bit on my fishing buddies boats, but have little experience on my own. I've managed to build up a small collection of trolling gear and when the weather cooperates, I head out. It's mostly in preparation for the Fall night walleye bite, that if you experience it, you'll be spoiled on Lake Erie walleye, guaranteed.

My buddy Walt and I hit the ramp around 6 or so. The lake was looking good. We headed North for a few miles, looking for the plentiful marks we found last week. I stopped in 50 foot of water and there they were. The marks were showing up between 15 and 40 feet down, just like last week. We trolled 61-68 feet last week, but decided to stay close today. We got caught in a storm last week and it took 4 days for the color to come back to my knuckles. No fun in an 18 footer, that's for sure.

Anyway, we got our spread set up and started. Dipseys on the 3 1/2 setting, 100 back on one side, 85 on the other with crawler harnesses. On the inside, they dipseys were set to #1 and we trolled spoons. Small double orange crush and Listerine were it. I had a BIG hit on the orange crush, but it pulled off. Sharp hooks will do that, but it felt like a sheephead anyway. After a time, we switched to all orange. It worked last week, but this week, all we could manage were a couple farm animals. No walleye.

Not sure, but I think the full moon last night may have shut them down. Usually, the fish will come up and keep feeding all night and the next day, have lockjaw. It was tough.

I couldn't help wondering if we had been in deeper water, we may have found active fish. Who knows? Maybe next time. The waves and wind were building, so we headed in.

Something different with the blog now is the addition of video. I'll take the Flip camera along and shoot some highlights of my outdoor experiences. I hope the fish aren't camera shy!

Anyway, with some experimentation, I'll get it down and make it interesting. I'll see you on the water.

Carl "Big Daddy" Bachtel