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My wife and I jigged for two hours yesterday afternoon and ended with 4 keepers. Threw a short back and lost two others. A little slow but the gale didn’t help. We were moving about 1.2 mph. Way too fast for my liking. Best color was black with a white eye. 3/4 ounce jigs were too light.

We fished just past the mud line due north of wild wings 2 1/2 miles out. We were a little east of a pretty good pack of boats. 20ish feet of water. Garmin was showing quite a few fish spread out in the general area.

Saturday April 20th. High wind, big waves, muddy water until we hit clean water northeast of L can. Trolled northeast several hours. 25 – 30 fow, 2 mph, 6 fish , lost 1. black head wonder bread bandit got 4, 65′ back unassisted. Started out by crane beach hoping to find calm water , found all kinds of ropes and buoys, nets I think. Lucky I didn’t wind up any in the prop.

Got my boat in today, docked a bush marine up in the point, wondering where everybody is picking there fish up out toledo, you trolling or is the jig bite still good, tight lines fellas

Made it out Weds and Thurs this week 4/17-18 to start the season. Same story both days. Crossing the brown water in the South Channel I could mark lots of fish but no biters. Arriving on the NW side of Kelly’s I found stained water and a fair number of boats. Not a lot of nets going up but there was some success. I got two fat ones on a pink and yellow bandit (rotten fruit?) 70 back and another 70 for the planer board. 2.2mph by GPS and 1.5mph by paddle wheel sensor. Water temp was 52 degrees at the surface. Fish cleaners was a ghost town so must have been modest success by most.

For you guys with a wife that would like a little more creature comforts than your center console or walleye boat can provide…take heart. We moved up last year from a 23′ outboard center console to a 29′ cruiser with twin v-drives. After a year of fixing and upgrades we feel she is now both comfortable for weekending and competent for walleye trolling or perch fishing. To be sure she is not as nimble as the outboard center console but wind, rain and most rough water are taken in stride. My only strong advice is this…get something with a flat deck between the helm and the stern. Lots of cruisers out there with a step down to trip on when you hurry back to tend a rod that is bent over 🙂 Fuel cost seems like a lot but when you eliminate the tow vehicle and the hotel room it balances out.

Good Luck in 2024 Everyone!!!!

Took my boat to the dock today and after getting all the lines set for tying it up we decided to take her out for a shake down cruise.
Guy next dock over had just come in after 6 hrs and had 3 they caught jigging up in Maumee Bay.
He told me I should go east but I went out north of Little Cedar Pt and jigged around for a while and nothing.
Since I had installed a new Panther steering unit I thought I would try it out, so we put out four rods and trolled untill we found some clearer water and boom nice big male on a wonder bread bandit running about 15ft deep.
We caught 8 total most on white with red head and wonder bread, 1 on a carrot top.

left dock around 5pm out of turtle creek was pretty ruff .water was muddy but started clearing up a little 18-19 ft .fished more less out front wild wings managed 9 was back at dock before dark fish were definitely there but tuff fishing in 3ft plus waves and drifting at 1.5

I here a lot of people talking about dodging nets. I have a map of the western basin and it shows indicators for net stakes. Do I need to avoid these areas? Do I need to avoid them all the time or only certain times of the year? Is there an indicator out on the water that I will see if I come across some?

I noticed that a lot of the reefs are in the military target zone. I’m not a local and in June I’m coming to Erie for only my second time. How do you know when they are doing targeting? Do they have coast guard out there to let you know? Is there a site I can go to to find out? I have a ship to shore hand held radio, is there a channel I should listen to? Any help is appreciated.

Sorry for the belated report. Still getting caught up. I had my cousins, my uncle and one of my cousin’s buddies in town from SD last week. We fished Erie for 5 days and the Detroit River for 2 days. Got our limits and then some every day but one.

We launched from the MI side and fished the shallows over rocky flats in 12-16 fow. 25-35 back was our best leads.

Best patterns for the week were:

Blue and Chartreuse – Most consistent pattern all week
Fermi-Nuff – The regular one was good when cloudy, but the chrome one was awesome in high sun.
Purple Passion – Both of them were good, but the white one was on fire the first two days.

We had many fish over 7 lbs and most of those big ones went back. The first fish of the trip was almost 11 lbs. Not a bad way to start.

In the river on Monday, we struggled to catch any decent ones. We were out during the eclipse, which was odd. It looked like a huge storm was coming and then it got sunny again. Tuesday on the river we did much better. I caught 26 walleyes myself and between the two boats we had over 60 keepers, plus lots of dinks. The CAN side had all the good ones.

On Wednesday, we went back to Erie and the water had cleaned up a ton. That day, the best patterns were:

Dottin’ Eyes
Blue and Chartreuse Chrome
Purple Passion Chrome
Glacier Shad

Water temps were pushing 50 and the best speed was 1.5-1.6. After we caught a limit, we decided to cast blade baits and we caught a few more walleyes doing that, along with some bonus smallies and a huge sheep.

Cheers,

Mike

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Anyone have any info on the bite in Michigan Waters? Like many of you, I am just a weekend warrior trying to make the best of a day off of work. Any information would be much appreciated.
Thanks to this great fishing community.