Kevin and I fished the Lake Erie Walleye Trail out of Marblehead this weekend. With cold temps and major winds the week prior it was a tough bite. For Prefish on Friday we started off in the Kelley’s area pulling cranks and spinners. We found great marks but had no takers. With some of our other teammates working the North Bass area, we figured we’d make the run to niagra reef to see it we could jig some fish up in the reef and troll up some bigger fish just off it. That’s exactly what happen. One slide over the reef jigging we caught 1 and hooked a few more. 3/8 oz Northland gumball jigs tipped with a 4″ Gulp minnow did the trick. We then started trolling the nice green water around it and caught a couple fish on spinners. After that, we headed over to touisant reef to jig a little more and caught one as the sun was going down. Gary, our other teammate, found good numbers of fish up by the bell buoy N of North Bass, but mostly smaller fish.
On game day, we decide to head to Gary’s spot first and found the strong East winds had ripped up that area. So after one short pass, we headed down to Niagra. First pass, we caught 2 fish on spinners, both barbie copper back colorado blades, trolling 1.5 oz snap weights (30′, weight, then another 25′). With big winds and waves, we had to run drift socks to cut down the surge, and we went to snap weights to reduce vertical swim. We thought that we were on the program, but after those first 2 fish, we went without a bite for a few hours. That prompted us to switch to cranks baits. Right away after the switch, 2 more nice fish, salamander and raspberry dolphin reef runners 60′ back caught us our fish. With about an hour left in the tourney, one more bite, one more fish, and we had our 5 fish to weigh in. Boy was that a relief to get that 5th one in the boat! That was all the fish we ended up with and we headed in to weigh in at 27.1lbs. That was good enough for 6th place in the 50 boat field.
The pic is Kevin and I with his 2 boys who just love to run around and play in the boat, even in the driveway! Can’t wait to get them in the tournament game here in a few years! Good times, and glad to get a good finish in a tough tournament..
