Last hurrah on Lake Erie ends productively
Last fishing trip of 2020 yields walleyes, wonder
Capt. Bob, with two mates aboard, was swilling down a tankard of Indian summer at last call for the Lake Erie fishing season.
As has become more the practice in recent times, hordes of other anglers would continue to follow their own late-year path to bliss. For traditionalist Bob, though, Monday’s afternoon trip was to be the finale of a lengthy season begun in May.
Simply put, the day’s eerily summerlike weather notwithstanding, the calendar and long-range forecasts suggested it was time to put away boat and tackle until fast-approaching winter comes and goes.
“The fishing was really good May through July,” Bob said. “Then things changed.”
The captain does most of his trolling off Lorain and Avon Point. Here the water isn’t as shallow as in the shoalstrewn islands area west where most of Lake Erie’s multimillions of walleyes spawn in early spring before dispersing lakewide.
In this deeper water, which takes a tad longer to warm, sustained action begins a bit later. Once the bite begins, the catching can be very good well into summer and fall depending on weather variables like wind and rain. Yet almost always the unexplainable plays a part.
Hard to account for was why the many fish that on occasion dotted Bob’s onboard finder screen showed reluctance to take a lure, be it a trailed plug, a spoon or a spinner spiked with nightcrawler. Even this late in the season, when the sun droops in the southerly sky like a low-hanging fruit and in other years walleyes have been known to bite throughout the brightest day, the fish seemed to be punching a clock.
“The bite has been early and late,” he said.
That a morning bite had occurred seemed true enough during this day on which the slanted sunshine above felt exceedingly warm despite a chill rising from the water below. Whether they’d been chasing yellow perch or walleye, anglers heading home after midday said they caught most of what they had in the box before 9:30 a.m.
Bob and crew member John, who’d retired in July after 43 shipping seasons of working the Great Lakes on ore boats and the like, were hoping for a bite that probably wouldn’t begin for another few hours, if at all.
Talk can go in almost any direction when the catching is slow. A long time had passed without a tug.
“It’s a beautiful day for this time of year,” said John while overseeing lines that sliced through a flat surface, so unlike tumultuous big water he’d known during the gales of November as part of a recent past.
“Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald going down,” he noted. “If those guys could’ve held on for 45 minutes, they would’ve been home free.”
More resignation than sadness about the fate of 29 comrades could be gleaned in John’s remark, an acknowledgment of the chanciness that accompanies hazardous work, of the brevity in fact of all existence.
About 3:30 p.m., three chunky walleyes bit in quick succession and got hoisted aboard and into the cooler, the makings of a fish dinner planned for the next day. By the time the basking sun dropped out of sight a little after 5 o’clock, four more walleyes and an enormous white bass had been brought aboard.
By then a few reassuring and familiar lights began appearing on the distant shore. The water’s coolness chilled the vacant air as Bob’s boat pointed home. The light of a glorious day was being extinguished like a solitary wake dissolving into the blanketing dark.
outdoors@dispatch.com