Lake Erie Walleye Fishing Tips and Techniques

We would like to review a few of the walleye fishing techniques and discuss a few thoughts for the 2010 fishing season in our area. Lake Erie fishing for this year in the central basin is going to be one of the boxes of very large walleyes if you do a few things right.

The majority of the fish this year will be from the 2003 year class which will average 6-8 pounds. These larger fish will be hanging out in our cooler, deeper waters for the summer months. Many large trophy walleye (10 pound plus) are also from the good hatches of the 80’s and 90’s. We should catch some of the 2001 and 2005 hatch fish weighing in around the area of 2-4 pounds.

Our spring fishing will begin in late April as we fish the shallow shore lines. At the end of April these fish have spawned and are ready to replenish their lost energy of the spawn. We will troll and cast early in the year with trolling being by far the most productive.

We will use planer boards, dipsy divers and down riggers while trolling in early spring. We use crank baits for trolling the shore line in May and early June. Our favorite baits are smithwick deep rogues, rappala deep divers, and reef runners. The bait sizes are from 4-6 inches. Popular colors are clown, silver and blue, purple, and perch. We troll these off of our planer boards; 5 on each side. Shakespear ugly sticks in 7 foot lengths do the work on these.

We carry 22 of these rods outfitted with daiwa and okuma line counting reels with 30 pound power pro braided line with an 8 pound diameter. This line gets deep fast and has virtually no stretch. We attach 6 foot leaders of seaguar 20 pound fluorocarbon to the end of these. Keep in mind that you need to use a polamer knot when tying the slippery braided lines. Different lead lengths are used to target the fish at various depths.

Typically 100 feet back will get you 20 feet plus. A little later during the spring season, we will switch to 10 jet divers with 6 feet leaders and Michigan stinger spoons and worm harnesses. This time of year we are trolling very slow, at speeds of 1.0 to 1.5 mph. When trolling the shore lines of Lake Erie, we run 40 feet leads in 20 feet of water putting these lures approximately 16 feet down.

As the water warms in June, we start to troll in deeper water up to 70 feet. We begin to use longer length with up to 50 size jets and dipsy divers and down riggers. As we troll the deeper water for these big old marbleyes, we go back 100-150 feet on the leads with 50 jets to get to the thermolcline which will begin to set up in 50 feet over 70 plus depths.

Our trolling speeds pick up to 1.5 to 2.0 mph. Trolling an S pattern really helps to trigger these fish this time of year. The bait fish out here in the deeper waters are larger alewifes, smelt, and emeralds. This is the time to use larger spoons in the 4-6 inch range.

We run up to 16 rods at one time in these deeper waters. On the boards we run 8 rods, 6 dips divers and 2 down riggers. The dipsy divers are set on different settings of 1, 2. and 3. The down riggers use 10 pound balls with leads of 25 feet.

We hope this has given you an idea on how we fish the central basin of Lake Erie for walleye.

Thanks for visiting our pages on fishing!!

Captain Jeff