Hows about a little help on what, where and when, my self and two friends will be heading to Erie this weekend. We are driving over Friday night to fish Saturday and take off that night. I've never fished Erie before, I have the gps coordinate list that Greg gave on the site. Was wonding for updated info. We will only be fishing the Michigan side, Whats working now? Where to start? What port would be best? Thanks for all of your help in advance. Oh and if anyone would care meet us at a port so we could follow ya out that would be great to. We have a 17ft Lund Pro V with a Merc 70 on it.
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Some things that will help narrow it down: Where are you launching from? How slow can you troll? What kind of gear are you set up with?
You might want to consider stopping at one of the local bait shops and getting the 1 day OH ticket, about $11. There has been pretty good fishing set up in the 50-48 / 10-8 area (Ohio water) for a while now. Not saying they will still be there Saturday, but it would probably be a decent spot to look.
I'm not going to be out Saturday, otherwise I'd have no problem with you following me out or giving you a call on the water. There's a growing group of regular posters putting up Erie reports and perhaps one of them will help put you on the fish. Good luck this weekend.
On edit: The best launchs are probably Sterling State Park and Bolles Harbor. State park and DNR launches respectivly, which ever sticker you have. I kinda liked Sterling better when I trailered every trip. Sterling park is at Exit 15 off I-75 and Bolles is off Exit 11. Bolles is a little trickier to get in and out of due to shallow water either side, see a good chart. Sterling is more in the middle of the fishing action too.
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We'er not sure where to lauch from yet, anything is open. We are set up to run in line planers two off of each side, run two rods thru the shoot, We have two big john lake trolls. Don't have any jet divers or slide divers, We have a electric top end minkota or a kicker thats a bit noisy. Most the time over here we just troll for pike 1.8-2.0 with raps all sorts. we have some crawler rigs and bottom bouncers, some hot-n-tots, what else should we have?
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Back in the early days for me (1970's), Hot n Tots and Erie Dearies were all I had - mostly due to no money. We trolled Tots on flat lines or drifted and cast the Erie Dearies. Both still work. I can't help you with the in-line boards, although a lot of guys use them on Erie for 'eyes. You should be able to pull your Tots and Raps with them successfully. Your Tots may need to be 'tuned' to run true.
In MI waters, you're talking less than 30 FOW. A lot of time you'll find the 'eyes suspended in the water column, try to target 2 or 3 feet above them. Choose your baits & set your lines accordingly.
If you can find the packs of boats, that's usually a good place to start working the edges. Not too difficult on a nice Saturday. Some may be trolling, some drifting, some anchored for perch. Binoculars can help. Common sense can help too, don't set up a drift right in front of a troller. If you're trolling, try not to pass downwind of a drifter. A lot of boats pull big board programs and cut a wide swath, watch for their flags.
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Justtrollin wrote: Thanks for the help, But whats the hot bait or lure right now? If the information is not classified.
Depends on how you want to fish. When walleye fishing Erie from my boat, I troll exclusivly. I run a big board program and like to pull the Big Jon mini-divers followed by a small spoon (Jr Streaks, Dreamweaver WD, Stinger Scorpion size). Is it "the" hot bait or lure? All I can say is it works very well for me. Sometimes I'll bump the spoon size to the MiniStreak/Northport 100 series or even regular salmon spoons. Sometimes I'll also pull crankbaits from the towlines. Over time, Wiggle Warts, Jr Thundersticks, Walley Divers, and Hot N Tots became my personal favorites. This year we've screwed around with Deep Husky Jerks and done well with them too especially early in the year!. A lot of guys swear by the various Reef Runner cranks.
If you're going to try the spoons, I suggest you look for copper backed ones. Silver and Gold backed have their days too. Productive colors can vary, if you read through past Erie reports you can get an idea of what works consistently. The following Silver Streak spoons in copper backed versions have been good to us the last couple years (in no particular order): Green Slick, Mixed Veggies, Blue Dolphin (tapeless), Lady Bug, Moldy Muffin and MiHi. Not copper backed, but other good ones are Watermelon AntiFreeze and Nuked Veggies, which can be hard to find. Dreamweaver WD's in Blue Melon and Grape Jelly have been very good too. Matthews Bait & Tackle (exit 11) and LaSalle Yacht Club (exit 9) have pretty decent selections. There are a couple bait shops just outside Sterling State park at exit 15 that I haven't been inside in a while that probably have spoons too.
Other guys like drift with crawler harnesses or "weapons" and do very well too. I try to avoid them, LOL.
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If you launch at Sterling be sure when you get to the main "channel" to the lake that you cross all the way over to the marina on the far side before you turn to the lake. Heed the buoys that mark the channel.
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Sterling has a great fish cleaning station, better bathrooms,but the channel can be tight in a big boat until you get past the marinia. Boles has better parking and access to the lake. North of the Boles entrance is very shallow when returning to dock. My two cents. Rick
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First and foremost, welcome to the board. Regarding your trip to Erie...I would suggest fishing the waters to the east/north of Stoney Point. I fished up there with Little Dandy last Thursday evening and there were A LOT of fish up there...by A LOT I mean lots of sheep, white bass, white perch...and WALLEYES...
However, we were on a relatively limited time schedule, so we moved out to W. Sister after about 90 minutes. We did manage 7 keeper walleyes in that time frame though. Fish were 19-21' down over 25-27fow. I'm sure we could've punched our tickets in MI waters, but it would have taken longer to do so than we had the time.
Basically...Roy, Steve, and I were constantly managing rods...I don't think there was a point at which we didn't have at least two fish of some sort coming in for that 90 minute period.
Your Hot n Tots should work well if you get them in the zone. As far as your bottom bouncer program is concerned, I've been hearing a lot lately about pink and purple harnesses being the ticket. If you run a combo of the above, you should do just fine.
Like Mike said...take the time (if you can) to stop in at Matthew's Bait and ask some questions. Those guys have been solid with their suggestions all year long.
BFG
Official Ohio Delegate to Team Heavy Super-Sized Fishing Specialists bfg@educatedangler.com
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I will give you some new spoons to try out. I live in Northville(275 and 96 area) and can meet you just about anywhere on Friday. You can give my cell a call 810-824-7543. We used some of these spoons last Thrusday on the Little Dandy and they produced fish.
Good Luck Roy
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My 2 cents, I was out Tuesday near the 1st marker of the Maumee River out of Bolles Harbor. We trolled spoons and jets, also Jr streaks. We caught 3 limits and were going to go out yesterday but the Lake was a little bumpy for us.
The reason I say Bolles Harbor is, there is a good boat ramp and 2 good bait shops just past the ramp entrance, stop in B 4 YOU HEAD OUT...They will give you an up to date report (also you could pick up an Ohio Licence, I would if I driving down this far).
I'm heading up to Grand Haven at the end of the month for a couple of days, hows the fishin been?
Also take the advice you get from guys like LittleDandy and BFG they always have good up to date info.
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Once again thanks for the hel, but it looks like the trip will have to hold off awhile. See i kinda was out riding bikes with all the neighbor kids doing some racing up and down the road when my ten speed front tire slid out and i wiped out. Turns out I broke my collar bone.
I would love take ya up on the offer for some spoons Roy maybe next time. The fishing in Grand Haven has been steady with larger fish being caught anywhere from 100-200fow 60-120 down, flashers and flies have been hot lately for me, but a good assortment of spoons and flies is good, last Sunday we fished from 6pm-9pm went one for three but had a wet dist cap that took some time to fix. marked a ton of fish in 90-120 fow 60-80 down straight out the channel. Good luck to ya.
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Sorry for the bad luck, I hope it don't keep ya off the lake too long.
I sort of did the same thing a couple of years back. I got on my nephews bike (after a couple of beers that is) and tried a jump they set up in the street, well the bike went one way and I went the other. Ended up breaking my wrist.
Needless to say you become a whole lot smarter after an incidence like that.
Thanks for the fish update, I can't wait to get into those monsters.
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