Lake Erie Bite 2024

[Gill-T]

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!

[JakeyBaby]

Love it! Wish I was heading to Ohio myself! Love that area.

[13owhunter]

I need to get out to Erie this year.  I have never fished it.  Meant to make the trip last year but I am 15 minutes away from Sandy and we had great fishing last year so was hard to make a decision to drive an hour to fish unknown water.

[sherman brown]

3 hours ago, 13owhunter said:

I need to get out to Erie this year.  I have never fished it.  Meant to make the trip last year but I am 15 minutes away from Sandy and we had great fishing last year so was hard to make a decision to drive an hour to fish unknown water.

this year is supposed to have the most legal walleye that Lake Erie has ever had. we have had several hatches in the last few years that were above average hatches. and a couple of them were the best hatches that was a lot above the best hatches since they started checking them. the biggest problem you should have is catching so many small fish that's not legal size.

[Gill-T]

Setting up and two pigs hit

[JakeyBaby]

Fatty!

[Gill-T]

[Smat64]

Is walleye open in another state?

[JakeyBaby]

Always open in Ohio

[Gill-T]

[Pete Collin]

Holy cow are they stacked in there!

[whaler1]

Actually heard a lot of folks struggled. 
Great job Gill. 

[Gill-T]

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. 

Edited March 29 by Gill-T

[Gill-T]

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. 

[Gill-T]

Day 2 bite is steady!  Good overcast walleye bite.   Meat spoon has just answered the bell on slide diver

[Gill-T]

8 fish in and wind switched hard out of East. Singing the East wind blues now. 

[sherman brown]

the fish are there now but you need to know what works and what it takes to get them to strike. 

 

right now I would still be running very slow with cranks to get down far enough to catch fish or what's needed to get them down,

 

if they are mid depth I like deep diving walleye bandit cranks. if they are really shallow the shallow walleye bandit works and using a clip on 2oz weight to get deeper your are good to go.

 

running cranks at a very slow speed like 0.6 to 1.5 is usually very productive if the fish are there and you dial in what gets you to the right depth. SUNSPOT, CHROME WITH BLUE BACK, AND A COUPLE OF THE BRIGHTER PERCH PATTERNS WORK BEST FOR US,

[Gill-T]

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!

Edited March 31 by Gill-T

[Gill-T]

Found this link. Helpful hints inside. 
 

 

[Gill-T]

Reports from last year can help you learn for this April. 
 

 

[Gill-T]

https://m.facebook.com/JulsWFA

[Gill-T]

 

[Gill-T]

 

[Gill-T]

 

[cheeseyrider]

Don't know much about Walleye fishing on Great Lakes, but question for you LO fisherman that travel to Ohio to fish walleyes. Have fished NY LO 30+ years and never thought much about it.  If NY & Pa were open for eyes where would you be fishing now and why. Can't believe fishing could be that better in any one area. My guess a lot of interest is for table fair and sport. En-lighten me or point me in the right direction . Thanks for any info willing to share. Checked Erie United but sorry no comparison to LO