Night Bite on Erie

If they are looking at having hot sunny days on Lake Erie with no breeze to speak of and your charter captain asks you if you would rather try fishing at night......you might want to say yes.

 When your fishing on a charter boat, sometimes you can be limited to your choices on how to fish to achieve the most success. We all no most charter boats will not troll, and its mainly because of fuel expenses, which I understand. Usually you drift casting harness's or using blade baits, or are jigging. But when the sun is high on clear water and you have hardly any breeze at all, it can be very tough fishing. Our group of Indiana Walleye anglers had scheduled a charter with Goose Charters for the weekend of May 20th - 22nd. Craig Adams of Goose Charters had called member Les Bontrager and told him that it would be tough fishing per the conditions, and wondered if our group would like to try night fishing on the reefs. So we decided to take his advice and go out Saturday morning at 2am. We traveled out to Cone Reef and started to cast out our Husky jerk baits. In the first couple of casts, you heard,  fish on...... then again.......fish on....... We had landed 2 four pound walleyes just like that. Needless to say we were pumped. We kept busy for the next few hours landing walleyes here and there. By the time the sun started to rise we had landed 18 walleye with around a four pound average, and the largest being 5.8 lbs. When the sun came out, the bite died. We decided to call it a day, and get rested for the next day.

  Sunday morning at 1am we were heading back out, but this time, the full moon was our enemy. The water was flat and the moon was very bright. We soon seen how just a little cloud cover or slight fog could make a huge difference in the bite. Every time  we would get cloud cover or a small fog would come our way, we would get bites. We landed 14 nice eyes by the time the sun rose again. While we were waiting for our fish to be cleaned, we chatted with other boaters. We found out we had caught more fish than most of the other anglers, chartered and regular boats alike that had fished during the day. So next time your captain asks you if you would like to fish at night.......tell him yes.

Doug Burkhead - Indiana Walleye founder