The first week of November. I had my buck tag already filled and there had been a south wind for the last three days. This meant one thing, no ducks have been pushed off the Lake Erie marshes and that the conditions for fall trolling were perfect for a solo trip.
My biggest problem when it comes to trolling is that I have a boat smaller than required to safely fish the big waters of mother Erie. But a south wind had been blowing for the last few days and I knew I’d be able to get my StarCraft Mariner 160 out on the calm waters.
I started my morning coming out of cranberry creek. A nice little marina due east about four miles of the famous Huron light house. Right on the lake shore, CC is managed privately and includes a convenient bait shop right inside the marina.
I headed north about two miles into the famous thirty five FOW mark and started my troll. I only run stick lures like bandit deep divers and smith wick P-10’s. The basics for someone starting to troll on Lake Erie. All of my rods are the cheapest, Daiwa wilderness rods. In my opinion, you do not need the higher end models of “rods”. I have the cheapo rods paired with the higher end Okuma Coldwater reels. The Cw-203dlx, a perfect midsize reel to hold just enough 10lb mono for the job.
I was trolling in between 1.4 and 1.6mph, a recommended speed from everyone on “Lake Erie Walleye” on Facebook. A local charter had given me a tip to run P-10’s 50+2. A method where you let a 2oz weight to do the leg work for the lure. You let out 50 foot of line and and clip on an offshore 2oz snap weight and let out a range of line depending on how far you wanna let the lure go down. In this case I was letting out another 50ft letting the lure troll at about 30 feet deep. A perfect depth for the first three fish I caught. While all on one rod and lure, I was confident I had found the golden ticket to the hungry eyes that day.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. After boarding the first three fish with a purple-clearish P-10 I had switched my other two rods to lures that were as close to that as possible. It was the wrong move. I switched speed, at first slower then got more aggressive and sped it up. Reeled some lines in and let some out farther. No prevail, noon had rolled around and I had been fish-less for two hours.
So I went back to old faithful, a white, blue and pink bandit deep diver, a purple bandit deep diver (similar to the P-10s) and a gold deep diving bandit. It seemed to work, I boarded one more fish within ten minutes. Feeling good about my decision of switching it up, I switched the gold bandit back out to a light green bandit. AKA taco salad, a solid choice according the Facebook experts.
My decision paid off, I reeled in my PB moments after letting the TS bandit out. A 7.1lb Lake Erie walleye. Not as large as some of the fish being boated in the derby at the time but still a solid fish. One of my other boards went back after dealing with big fish in the boat. And it really went back. I had thought at the time I had a 10+ pound fish on the end of the line. But my head knew what it was, a giant sheepshead. I fought the prehistoric monster for fifteen minutes as it rolled like a crocodile all the way to the boat. After winching in the hog, I decided to call it a day.
When throwing in the towel I was fortunate enough that my last remaining rod had a fish on it. And it was a good one, a fat 4.5lb walleye. A perfect way to end the day and fill my solo limit.