We ended mid afternoon one shy of a three man limit. Instead of pounding GPS marks today, we did a little exploring of some of the structure around the islands hoping to learn more about this area that is new to us. Today’s catch was a better class of fish. Probably better we didn’t get the last fish because it pushed us into new water plus we couldn’t close the lid on the cooler with what we had. The program all weekend was seven board lines with scatter rap taildancers or deep bandits plus two slide divers with northport nailer wild thing spoons tipped with crawlers. Board lines were either run clean or snap weighted with 1-2ozs of weight. That will do it for walleye until this summer for this salmon fisherman. Back to Lake Ontario for now!
Noteworthy that 50% of the fish we cleaned had spawned already. If you want to get in the the big fish action, you better come soon. We were fishing with a large group of boats north of Bass Islands near Canadian border.
We got our three man limit with three throw backs and a few lost fish. It was a seven hour grind however. With 100 boats around, they got a little goofy at times until we figured them out.
By all accounts from fisheries biologists, this should be an epic year on Erie. For me, the journey starts in Ohio Friday and Saturday. Let this thread grow with everyone’s fish reports as there is zero reason to be secretive about this fishery where fish hit every lure color combination known to man. Good luck in 2024!
Just a heads’up on some legislation that supports our pursuits.
A08213/S07086
This bill will earmark DEC fines to supporting outdoor activities instead of going into the general fund. Please contact your legislators to support this legislation.
Was your gun an AR platform? I hear a lot of stories about not racking the bolt hard enough can cause the bullet to not be seated fully and the strike pin doesn’t hit the primer hard enough.
Weather and wind will have me off the water this weekend. Going to help with pen project Saturday in Olcott but definitely a good weekend to watch Bassmasters. Who likes who for the win? Scopers or bank fishermen?
The green fish are in great shape this year. Probably need a 20 lber to place on the LOC Derby based on how fat the fish are showing. Beautiful green water off Niagara County right now which is change from the usual beige water from salt runoff that we see in most March excursions. Fish were tight to bottom and willing participants. See a fish on graph, fish on. We tried like hell to catch some silver fish but no dice yet. Lakers were in the 80’ band. We played in the 25’-35’ for silver fish and caught 4 accidental browns that hit 5.5” spoons meant for kings. Weather forecast was way off. 3-5’ waves from West steady all day. Offshore water temp 39.2 degrees. Inshore water temp was 41 ish. Creek temp was 47 degrees. There is bait and browns in the harbor for those that like to cast. A few anglers had impressive perch stringers fishing the piers.