Jason, a couple of friends and I planned a trip on Lake Erie to fish for Smallmouth and Perch. The day started out with ominous tones, torrential rain, lightening, and an incorrectly marked bridge clearance sign. We met at the Vermilion public ramps and decided to have some breakfast while waiting to see if the storm would pass. It was then that we found out about the bridge clearance sign. On the way to the restaurant, Jason’s boat Stinky Fingers II became slightly wedged beneath a railroad trestle. We figure that that they had repaved the road, but not re-measured the clearance. It was definitely not starting out to be a good day.
During breakfast we got a break in the weather so we put in and headed out on the lake, Jason and a couple of friends in his boat and I hitched a ride with a another friend of ours (Kim). The river was blown from the recent rains and it made for an interesting ride out, a very fast current and whole trees moving down river. We got out to the mouth unscathed only to see that there was mud line out to about a ½ mile from shore and heading in the direction of the area we planned to try for the Smallies. We made the decision to go after Perch first and try later for the Smallies.
We went just about due north and anchored in 36’ of water, Jason and his crew anchored about 50’ away. We started fishing ¼ oz. Buckshot spoons tipped with minnows, while the other boat fished with Perch rigs and minnow combo. The Perch seemed to prefer the jigging spoon presentation. We were catching them pretty steadily, but had to weed through a lot of smaller Perch. About and hour in to the fishing I hooked into something big, it turned out to be a 31”, 10 ½ lb. Walleye. It was fun landing him on ultralite tackle. We fished until our boat had culled through and got a limit of Perch (nothing smaller than about 9”). We also wound up catching 2 more Walleye on the jigging spoon and a 4 lb. Smallmouth on a Vibee. The Stinky Fingers crew was still working on their limits of Perch when we left to go try for some Smallies.
We headed back into shallower water hoping that the mud line had not reached the reef area we intended to fish. We were in luck the water was in perfect condition. The drift was kind of fast and the lake had built to about 2’-4’ waves. We started out by drifting large Shiners on split shot rigs. I lost the first 3 that I had on, but Kim managed to get a healthy 4 lb. fish to the boat. My first fish in the boat was a very scrappy 3 lb’r. It pretty much was the same throughout the rest of the trip. I primarily stay with the live bait, but Kim was very successful casting a blue/silver Vibee. We were able to land around 50 Smallmouth between us; the largest was just shy of 5lbs.. Our average on the day was around 3lbs. All the Smallmouth were freed to fight another day.
We were just about to call in a night when Kim picked up a 4lb.Walleye out of 9’of water on a gold/green Vibee, so we decided to try a few more drifts. When it was all said and done, we had another 3 Walleye in the box.
What started out to be a less than perfect day ended up being one of the better days we have had on the lake. Truly the only downside was that the Stinky Fingers crew called the trip early to assess the damage on the boat and didn’t get to share in the wonderful Smallmouth fishing.
May 11, 2003 at 1:30 am
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