Lake Erie Fishing Report, October 23-29, 2021 by Gary Speicher, NPAA #128

WINDY! That was the reason we only got to fish three out of seven days at Lake Erie in late October. Our walleye wisdom teammate, Jim Wessels, and his two pals, Marc and Ron, came over to stay with my teammates, Dan and Cliff, at Bays Edge in Port Clinton. We arrived Saturday with high hopes for a great week of fishing. However, we only got to fish Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday coming back home Friday because of the big waves and rain in the picture. We put in at Vermilion and Huron to look for our fish with reports of a school of walleye east of Vermilion. We did find some walleyes on Sunday with more caught in Jim’s Ranger 620 than our boat. The wind blew on Monday and Tuesday creating a muddy mess out there. We went looking for clean water and had to run out over eight miles from Huron to find fishable water. I took Dan and Cliff back to an area near the north dumping ground where we connected with some nice fish back in September and got close to our limits. We returned on Thursday to same area while Jim’s crew went out about eight miles between us and Huron. We were over 13 miles out fishing in the waves from the northeast to southwest. Unfortunately, the wave forecast was off–they predicted two to three feet waves but they were actually over eight feet! I had Cliff drive the Ranger 620 using the kicker to move us while Dan and I worked the planer boards and landed our fish. We had water come over the back of the boat too many times that day! We were able to only make two passes in the big waves and chose to come in around 3pm with the waves building even bigger! Jim’s crew boated a three man limit while we ended with 13 walleyes. We took the time to drive over to Sheffield Lake and weigh three of our fish, two five pounders and a nearly eight pounder, at Erie Outfitters for the Walleye Slam event. Friday’s wave forecast was for bigger waves than Thursday! Oh, I forgot to mention coming in on Thursday was like a “live” video game as we rode the tips of the waves all the way back at around 20mph! I’ve never had this kind of on the water experience…and don’t care to experience it again! Thanks to Dan and Ron for cleaning and freezing our walleyes for the ride home plus the cooking expertise they both share. We got our boats ready for the ride home Friday and awoke early to rain and wind making it a little tough loading our gear in the boat and Suburban. On our “blow” days we toured the local bait stores that were open and my guys and I ended up at Erie Marine Sales with general manager George Plevrakis looking over the monster Warrior boat in their showroom along with the Hewescraft boats they had for sale. We also met some nice men from near Escanaba at Fisherman’s Central who were doing the same thing as us–looking over the new Vexus boats Tyler Holben had for sale! Thanks, again, to our pals for making the best of the tough weather along with Mark Cahlik’s staff at Bays Edge in Port Clinton for their attention to our needs. Be sure and check out the Fall Brawl and Walleye Slam results as the fish just keep getting bigger heading into Thanksgiving week. Thank you, Mike G., for posting our story, pics, and video you should watch to learn just why Mother Erie is to be respected! Tight lines, Spike