Lake Erie’s Trophy Walleye Ice Bite
Dan Armitage 02.12.14
Walleye anglers willing to brave the harshest conditions of the season may find fishing action at its best. Or so it seemed atop the Walleye Capital of the World, where license plates in waterfront parking lots proved anglers from all over the Great Lakes have converged on the Western Basin of Lake Erie to catch huge walleyes. Such diversity in geographic draw isn’t unusual to see during the open water season on the southernmost Great Lake, which is known for giving up giant ‘eyes. Lake Erie’s ice bite, however, has been MIA for nearly a decade. Not for lack of big walleyes, but for lack of ice.
That’s not the case during the frigid winter of 2014.
I host a syndicated outdoor radio show broadcast weekly on 24 stations across Ohio, and first got word of the big fish bite a week ago, when a guest on an entirely different outdoor subject (rabbit hunting) mentioned photos of a huge ice-caught, Lake Erie walleye being circulated on message boards. Rumors had the fish carrying record proportions, but when I tracked down the story and talked to the fishing guide who snapped the photo of his client, Mike Patterson, I was told “No, no new state record. Guys blew it out of proportion when they started sharing the photo. But it was a nice fish. Twelve pounds, 32 inches-plus,” he said, adding: “We’re getting 10s practically daily. Wanna’ join us?”
Which is what I did over the weekend, booking a room at a B&B on Catawba Peninsula and, following a bitterly cold half-hour ride across six miles of snow-covered ice aboard a tracked Polaris UTV with Patterson, joined his mobile fishing camp. The setup consisted of a dozen Frabill two-man shanties outfitted with heaters. They were portable enough to allow Patterson to pick up and move to follow shoals of active fish, which he had done twice since that first big fish was caught off Catawba, moving west each time.
We were planted over some big, cooperative walleyes, as witnessed by the fish I was frequently asked to photograph once word got out that I was an outdoor writer. I ended up shooting more giant walleye than I caught, which is frequently the case, but I got in my licks on decent fish when I was able to wet a line.
Walleye pro Mark Brumbaugh joined us Saturday evening, and quickly had a six-pounder to show for his efforts. Earlier in the day he had caught and released a 31-inch walleye, and Sunday he was into the fish as well, although icing more numbers than size.
We were over 22 feet of water and my Vexilar camera showed a bottom of mud, stones, and zebra mussels. The hot baits were gold and orange Little Cleo spoons and perch-patterned jigging Rapalas—all hooks were draped with emerald shiners provided by Patterson. The busy guide complimented regular bait deliveries with offerings of cheese brats and meatballs fresh off the grill. The side pocket of our shanty contained a bag of venison pepperoni sticks for snacking, which was a nice touch but risky if washed down with shots of Fireball cinnamon whiskey.
I saw the biggest walleye of the weekend, a 12-pounder, taken at 3 p.m. Sunday, and had my best action between 2 and 3 p.m. Typically, as with most walleye fishing, there is an early and late “bite.” The under-ice action was consistent, if not fast, throughout Sunday, which featured three inches of snow—atop about eight inches that were on the ice when I arrived on Saturday.
It was hard-core fishing in hard-core conditions carrying some risk (we had to carry rough-hewn boards atop the four-wheeler to allow us to cross a crack that separated the offshore ice camp from the mainland). But the payoff is big walleye—and ice fishermen are coming from all over to experience it.
Dan Armitage is a full-time freelance outdoor writer and radio show host based in Columbus, Ohio. His work appears in regularly in national and regional magazines, and he is a popular speaker at sport and travel shows across the Midwest, where his radio program “Buckeye Sportsman with Dan Armitage” (buckeyesportsman.net) is syndicated weekly in two dozen markets. A graduate of The Ohio State University, Armitage resides in the Columbus suburb of Worthington with his wife Maria, who is a research librarian with the Columbus Metropolitan Library System, their 13-year-old-son Ethan and two English setters.
