walleyes

[purple heart]

Walleye season starts here May 2. I don't start fishing until the 4th
because I don't fish weekends. I did for many years and fought the
crowds. Now I only fish the week days. We get about a month and a
half to fish the walleyes when they are in the rivers, post spawn.
Anybody else fish walleyes?;)

[Bill Gunn]

I just (yesterday) finished tyeing up some more worm harnesses for walleye...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/361892866.jpg

I probably have about 60 different ones to try now.

I fish Lake Erie, and we usually do pretty well there. It also opens the 2nd. There are so many that they raised the limit on the NY and Canadian sides in the last couple years...

They barely fit in a 70 qt. cooler...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/328684242.jpg

Here's a limit from a couple years ago with a 13# 4 oz. one...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/30834278.jpg

I'm still trying to find the perch in the Lake Erie shallows (40 to 60 feet) right now (weather permitting). Once we find them, the party starts :p

You wouldn't believe the good fishing here. You could keep enough to feed your family for a year in a good week if you wanted to.
I'd rather just fish...

[Bushman]

Aren't those big ones soft for eating. When we started going to Canada there was no such thing as a slot size and we were hurting the lake taking out those big fish. Fishing has gotten progressively better since we can only take one fish of a species for mounting. We eat the 15-16" walleyes all week long and throw the big ones back to get even bigger. I'm still looking for a 32" or over as we get 30-31" usually every year, but a 32" is a very old fish (estimated at 18-20 years old by the scale samples that we have pulled) and I'm not sure that many live that long where we go.

I bought that wide view transducer last year that you recommended for the Humminbird and it sure showed where the perch were.

[Bill Gunn]

Fishing in Lake Erie is not like walleye fishing in the smaller lakes.
It's literally a 250 mile by 50 mile walleye factory. There have been MANY times when guys come in with 2 man limits that weigh OVER 60# ! Thats only a 6# average in a lake where 10 pounders don't even get a second glance. It takes a fish over 12#'s to turn any heads at the East end of the lake.

Here's one that weighs 10# 2 oz. that we got right out from Buffalo NY.

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/89811385.jpg

In Erie, at this end, the normal depth for fishing is from 55 to about 110 feet. There is no culling when the fish are from that deep. Their bladders are blown so large that they die anyways ( I've heard of "Fizzing" but I've seen studies where they die from infection from it also, so why throw back a legal fish to have it die?). I almost NEVER (I really don't remember any) catch fish under 20" when fishing deep. At night we do get some that are as small as 17".
There's so many fish that many times we get 2 limits in less than 2.5 hours, and I've done it in 90 minutes.

As far as taste, you have to clean and cook ANY larger fish differently than you would cook a smaller one. When we clean, any meat that isn't pure white is removed. It isn't much meat your loosing, mostly the mud line down the center on each side, which zips out like a zipper in less than 3 seconds if you do it right.
When cooking, you cut the fillets so that the thickness is almost the same for the length of the fillet. You also half the thickness of a fillet on a bigger fish. There's no way a 3" thick piece of meat is going to cook the same as a 1/2" thick piece near the tail.
When you clean a big fish right, there is absolutely no difference in taste from a 17"er to a 32"er. We are not allowed to keep any walleye from Erie under 15" (Walleyes that small are very seldom seen at this end of Erie, The Muskie's have to be 54" to keep!)

The fishing pressure is HIGHLY regulated by a commission comprised of Ontario, and all the states bordering Erie.
This years Total Allowable Catch of Walleyes is 2.450 MILLION fish, that includes a lot of walleyes that Canada nets with gill nets. Canada considers Lake Erie a "Commercial" lake, not a "Recreational" lake, so they net the hell out of it. It produces so much fish for them (last year about 1.7 million Walleye, and 6 million pounds of perch) that they feel they Have to net to make the money. That's a heck of a lot of fish, and it's only 1/2 of what is taken annually with no effect on the populations. The biggest effect on fish populations in Erie is the weather during the breeding season. Bad weather = bad production.
The TAC for perch is 12.012 million pounds. The NY section of the lake is relatively small, we're only allowed 459,000 pounds !!


I freekin' LOVE my Humminbird !!!!!!

[Bushman]

Interesting about the fizzing killing the fish from infection. I've never done it, but I sure thought about learning how because both 30" plus walleyes on my wall rolled over and floated up after we tried to resuscitate them. They tried to swim for the bottom, but they could not get rid of the air in their swim bladder. They only came out of 15' of water so we were surprised that they would inflate to that level in that shallow of water. At $10. an inch that worked out to a pretty expensive wall decoration, but it beat seagull food for honoring the fish.

Is that Lake Erie walleye production all natural reproduction? We have a great trout and salmon fishery here in Lake Michigan, but it is through a large state stocking program, not natural reproduction.

You can tell that those are younger fish because they have smaller heads in relation to their bodies. Canadian old fish have huge heads in relation to their thinner bodies. We have those younger big walleyes in Green Bay too because of the increased forage base. My taxidermist can not get over the difference in the head size between the local fish and the ones that I've brought him from Ontario. A few years ago I pulled scales from lots of different age class walleyes we caught in Canada and took them to the local DNR office. We had fish up to 31" and near everything from 28" on up was 17 years old and over. The growth rings get real close together on those old ones and even though they blew the image up large, 18 was as near as they could tell for our largest one.

[Bill Gunn]

Erie is almost (or is) 100% natural production now for walleyes in NY.
Years ago they would put fish in, but with the economy, many states have shut down a lot of their hatchery's. I think they still stock some Salmon and trout.

Pa. and Ohio have done a lot of stocking in the past, but I don't know if they still do. The Biggest walleye spawning grounds for Erie are around the islands at the far west end of the lake. The fish migrate to Pa. and NY in May and June, following the bait. That's why the fish are so big here, the smaller walleyes don't migrate as much & most stay at the western end of the lake.
The smaller ones we get at night here are local fish that were born at this end of the lake and they stay shallower. At night we troll in 6 to 20 feet of water over shoals and near shore with stick baits. At day, we go from 50 or 55 to 120 feet with stick baits, worm harnesses, and spoons.
Bait balls that are 70 feet deep are fairly common at this end of the lake. When you go over them, it looks like your fish finder is broken !!
You look over the side of your boat when trolling, and see them (Lake Erie Emerald Shiners) just about thick enough to walk on, all around your boat.

Your heart rate goes up, 'cause you know what also is down there, eating them :):)

[purple heart]

Those are some awesome fish Bill. We use to have a pretty good walleye
fishery here in lake champlain years ago but the state decided to try to
turn the lake into a trout and salmon lake as they saw lots of guys headed
to lake ontario to fish trout. It turned out to be a disaster but the state
don't want to admit they screwed things up so they just keep beating a dead horse trying to bring it back. Now we have lousy trout,salmon, and walleye fishing. I've been chasing walleyes for about 40 years now so I don't know
enough to quit. I really look forward to it in the spring. We fish walleyes in
the rivers after they spawn. Years ago I use to fish at night. Trolling plugs
around reefs. I'm afraid I'll see the day when walleyes are an endangered
species here and any caught will have to be released. Instead of walleyes we
will have to try catching trout and salmon that are covered with lampreys.

[Bill Gunn]

It turned out to be a disaster but the state
don't want to admit they screwed things up so they just keep beating a dead horse trying to bring it back.


That sounds like NYS :rolleyes: :rolleyes:


We fish in Ontario now and then, but I throw everything back. The trout and Salmon don't taste as good (to me) as perch and walleye from Erie.
I live pretty much between Erie and Ontario.

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/1527241/362255041.jpg

[Smokey]

My parents would take me to Erie, PA to visit friends when I was a kid. That was in the fifties. We would go to the lake and the shore was covered with dead fish. It looked as if there was a white line as far as you could see along the edge of the lake. It was from the bellies of the dead fish floating in the shallows.

Later while running manufacturing plants in the Chicago area I would take customers walleye fishing in Lake Erie. The fishing was great. It is truly remarkable how the states and Canada turned that lake around.

[Bill Gunn]

It is an awesome story of how the lake came back. The real motivation for the cleanup was when On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

In '79, and '80 I worked on the refrigeration at a chlorine plant in Ohio where there was so much mercury in the ground that when they dug footers for a new big chemical tank, they had to LITERALLY shovel the mercury out of the ground at the bottom of the footer holes!
My hotel room rug would sparkle after a week of from walking in the mercury on the plant floor under the cells where the chlorine was made.

Talk about a wake up :eek:

The lake will never be what it once was. They have found bones of Freshwater Drum (SHEEPSHEAD) in ancient Indian campgrounds that were from 60# fish !!
Just 2 generations ago people would go out for Blue Pike (a a blue fish, that was a little smaller than the yellows today) and would catch them so fast that they didn't even use rods, just string around a board jigged over the side.
I caught one blue back in '72 and by that time they had to be thrown back, now their extinct.
Now the perch, yellows, trout, small mouth's, and salmon are are almost making up for it though.
I was out walleye fishing near Dunkirk one day in '03, and a guy from Ohio was out there walleye fishing too.
He latched on to the NYS record lake trout.. 41 lb. 8 oz. and landed it with a walleye rod! I can't imagine the look on his face when he seen it compared to the size of his net !!
I can tell you I was surprised when I seen the size of my 13 lb 4 oz. walleye.

Here's a 28 lb Laker I got last year for comparison, I just can't imagine 41 pounds...

http://pic90.picturetrail.com/VOL2250/777751/2652330/289239810.jpg

[ncboman]

That's a real nice fish Bill. :)

wish we had some of em here.

I've got some of those pretty walleye worm rigs. An internet friend (wooly) on another forum sent me a bunch of em.

ncboman