Lake Erie report 11-8-09

[River Walker]

 Fished Erie yesterday mostly a ways east of Kelley's with Rocknfish.The water has cleared up nicely in that area after all the big waves that have been tearing it up lately.I caught some real nice smallies,including 2 over 5lbs.I was mainly using a drop shot rig with a 4" Strike Zone Slammer as the bait.Experimented with several colors and the green pumpkin/w purple was what was most effective,although I did get my biggest on the watermelon/w chartreuse dipped tail.Aaron hooked into something that ran like a freight train,no way was it a sheepie,or catfish.This fish just grabbed on to his bait and made one drag-screaming run in a straight line(no side to side crap like sheepies always do)eventually after pretty much stripping the reel it popped off.He was guessing he may have had a hold of a sturgeon,guess that's possible,my guess was either a large salmon(although it never jumped),or possibly a big muskie.Over the years I have seen 2 muskies caught from around Kelley's.After Kelley's we tried a few inshore areas without any success other than 1 nice largemouth about 3lbs.or so that I caught on a drop shot from out in front of the East Harbor breakwall.It was definitely a great day to be out,the waves were less than 2' all day,and the air temps were in the high 60's.Should've tried for walleye a little bit though,I saw so many marks east of Kelley's,seems most were suspended at about 15'-17' in water 27' deep.When I returned to the ramp at Mazurik's,I talked to a lot of the guys heading out to night fish for the eyes,and they all said they have been nailing them after dark really well.

[SethV]

Nice report.  Sounds like it was a great day.

A couple years ago I had something similar to your "big fish story".  I was fishing a couple hundred miles east of you, off the buffalo shoreline.  I hooked something, it took off like a rocket, no slowing it down.  After about 75 yards I was almost spooled, it stoped.  I could not move it.  Followed it with the boat, got right over the top of it and could not do anything with it.  It was just slowly swiming around, no idea that I was pulling on it as hard as my 10 lb floro would let me.  After about 15 minutes, I started pulling harder and harder and then the hook pulled out.  I caught a 50 lb sturgeon in the st clair river, this "thing" was bigger.  No idea what it was.  Some big scarry stuff down there in Erie!!   

[River Walker]

 Yeah,I talked on the phone with Aaron a little while ago,we're still puzzled about what it could have been.Two years ago,I was fishing fairly close to the Cedar Point foghorn fairly close to the long rip-rap wall.A buddy that was in the back of my boat was flipping a small bass jig along the rocks when something monsterous grabbed a hold of the jig.This particular fish had to be absolutely huge,considering dude was using 50# Sufix braid and a fairly stiff rod.Again,this fish made no left or right turns,or any head-shaking,just a blistering,straight line shot for open water.The line was sizzling out of his baitcaster even after he tightened the drag up almost all the way.I tried to follow the fish the best I could,but at that time,I only had a 55# bow mount.That was like chasing a ferrari in a cargo van! I didn't have time to jump off the bow and climb around him to start up the main engine,so we tried to keep up with the fish the best we could,even with the TM running,I could actually feel the fish pulling us a bit,crazy.He was getting low on line,but amazingly it seemed as though the fish was actually starting to tire somewhat and he was gaining back some line.I actually thought that we may end up at least getting to see what this beast was,but then the unthinkable happened(well actually if you fish Erie it's really not unthinkable)some moron cut around the front of my boat and caught my buds line in his prop and that was the end of that! I remember I told him that I would've gave up a weeks pay to see what that fish was,I probably still would.