Walleye to the weather: The delightful chunkiness of Lake Erie

MARBLEHEAD, Ohio—Virtually everyone at Big Boppers Restaurant, even the charter captains, were either pulling up apps on their phones to check wind, waves and forecasts for Lake Erie or talking about the weather.

At our table, Joe McCartin was deciding how big of a window we had to fish.

“You’ll have a chunky ride,” a customer, eavesdropping from a nearby table, chimed in.

Chunky ride, chunky fish.

That’s Lake Erie, it’s about weather conditions as much as the fishing. But what fishing.

McCartin pulled together a trip the final week of April to fish walleye in the Erie’s western basin. If you’re an angler who walleye fishes there, it’s another year to plan a trip or two.

The Ohio DNR in its Lake Erie Fishing Outlook last month noted, “Walleye angler harvest rates set records in 2018, and numerous large hatches point to a bright future for the Walleye Capital of the World.”

In its walleye assessment, the Ohio DNR projected, “Walleye anglers will mostly catch abundant 4 to 5-year-old fish that will average 19 to 21 inches and could be as large as 26 inches.”

That’s almost exactly what we caught.

McCartin had invited electrician Tim Mannix, and Wisconsinites Dion Perry and his son Dion Walleye Perry Jr., whom McCartin knew from Halter Wildlife. They arrived a day ahead before me.

They had good weather on April 25. In the afternoon, McCartin texted a video of a full live well, “Yes, 2 1/2 hours, four-man limit.”

Through April, the limit was four walleye daily. On May 1, it increased to six daily.

I had to wait a day because of family obligation to catch the opener of “Avengers: Endgame”. “Avengers” to walleye, welcome to my world. I left the theater around 9 p.m., then drove through the night to reach Little Ted’s Cottages by dawn. It was worth the sleep deprivation.

When we launched at Mazurik Access Area, down the street from Little Ted’s, only a few trailers were in the lot. The day before the lot was nearly full.

This was fun fishing, so McCartin gave us a comfortable ride out in his Ranger. It was mostly 2- to 3-footers with the occasional rogue 4-footer. The most challenging part was through “The Chute,” the gap between Catawba and South Bass Island. “The Chute” funnels wind, waves and water on a northwest blow.

McCartin had us set up upwind of the GPS-marked hotspot from the day before east of South Bass. He chose that spot because it was wind protected and the water was cleaner.

McCartin uses the Great Lakes MODIS Imagery Region Map to check for clean water spots when fishing Lake Erie. It’s a cool system and works for other Great Lakes.

We fished within sight of Perry Monument. At the the hotspot, we hit a triple. Well, I started catching first with a couple white bass. We caught and released eight white bass, all 17-18 inches. Surprisingly, not a single freshwater drum was caught.

After that, it was mostly hunt and pick until we had nine walleye and lost about the same number.

We had time for McCartin, a legendary cook among anglers and hunters around Chicago, to give this Mexican-flavored walleye recipe:

At one point, we trolled close enough to Canada that Verizon texted, “Welcome to Canada. As talk, text and data is included in your domestic plan you’ll have no additional charges while roaming.”

In the final two hours, we did not get a bite as the water became muddier and muddier behind the frontal passage with increasing winds and waves. As whitecaps picked up, McCartin made the call to pull lines.

As we picked up, it cleared enough that we could see rides in the distance at Cedar Point Amusement Park. We had our own amusements.

I thought the elder Perry was joking when he said he had a walleye on the last rod, but he did, one of our two biggest.

It was time.

As we cleaned fish at Little Ted’s cleaning station, the Perrys taught me a new trick, wrap each pair of fillets in plastic wrap. It protects from freezer burn and allows individualized thawing.

That night, it was steaks, potatoes and corn on the cob on the grill and way too much red wine.

In the morning, winds blew as hard as predicted. One trailer was in the lot at Mazurik. We headed home, in time to catch the first flakes of the historic late snow in Chicago.