The author explains how a two-prong approach pulls in eaters on Erie — and will on your lakes, too.
There is a long and productive tradition of ice fishing on Lake Erie. From more than 100 years ago until it was banned in 1970, commercial fishermen and other locals on the islands and coastal towns who were idled from their summer employment sought Lake Erie whitefish, sauger, walleye, yellow perch and blue pike to legally sell to fish dealers for supplemental winter income.
From the above list, only walleyes and yellow perch still remain in large enough numbers to attract angling attention. The rest succumbed to water pollution, especially from the 1930s to 1970s. Blue pike, a subspecies of walleye, became extinct.
When safe ice does form on Lake Erie, the first and longest coverage is usually present in the Bass Islands of the Western Basin. Ice floes that form in this shallow end of the lake during periods of calm, cold temperatures drift eastward until they become wedged in the coves and craggy island shorelines.
The residents of Put-in-Bay, a village on South Bass Island, typically are usually the first ice anglers able to venture out from South Bass Island State Park on the west side of the island. As the ice field expands and thickens, they migrate closer to Green Island.
The next ice floe bottleneck develops between South Bass and Rattlesnake Island, which is the primary fishing grounds used by the Put-in-Bay community and guides.
In addition to my job as manager of Ohio State University’s biological field station, I was a licensed ice guide there for more than 15 years. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to operate every year due to the absence of fishable ice, called “open winters” by the locals.
Rare before 2000, open winters have occurred in roughly alternating years in the islands since, with other less-protected areas of Lake Erie absent of ice even more often.
The Earth continues to set new records for the hottest temperatures ever recorded in the short period of time that humans have been keeping accurate score.
When Mother Nature cooperates, anglers by the thousands participate in ice fishing on Lake Erie from Brest Bay in Michigan to Kelleys Island in Ohio. While most anglers come from nearby towns, throughout Ohio and nearby Michigan, surprising numbers come from other states with solid ice to seek Erie’s trophy walleyes.
Between the islands, shantytowns develop in the specific areas still favored by the remaining guides and locals who eagerly recolonize their territory as soon as conditions allow. While now retired, my shanties and winter supplies remain on the island, so I return to Put-in-Bay whenever the ice forms there.
Normally, I fish with my buddy Jerry Bambauer of New Bremen, but my Uncle Tom Hamlin (North Ridgeville) and brother Ronald (Swanton) also willingly enlist for this same tour of duty, after seeing how well it works to put fish in the bucket.
Simply put, we both begin by jigging for walleyes while using a Swedish Pimple or a Jigging Rapala, the most popular lures for the species during the winter on Lake Erie.
During the past 40 years, I have caught enough walleyes on Jig-a-Whoppers, Little Cleos, Moonshine Shiver Minnows and a few others to know that they also work.
However, until Swedish Pimples and Jigging Rapalas quit working for me, I will remain loyal to these favorites, only switching lure colors when the water clarity changes and fish fail to respond to the lure in use. I am sure that it is just like everywhere else in the walleye world, where clearer water dictates the use of a variety of greens, nickel and blue/chrome. And dirtier water is a prescription for orange, gold, perch, fire tiger and other darker colors. Sometimes when the fish are thick, it really doesn’t matter what color or lure style that you put in front of them.
My buddy Randy Bundy from North Bend, Ohio, always buys a bag full of lures before coming up. He happened to hit the walleye bite just right and we ended up using every color in his new mini tackle box to try to see what wouldn’t work. Some of the ugliest color patterns known to man caught fish, such as yellow with brown stripes, root beer and amber prism. It is noteworthy to remember that colors as seen at the surface look different underwater due to the gradual absorption of the brighter wavelengths relative with depth.
I used a violet Swedish Pimple over nickel for weeks at a time, and Jerry is hooked on their “Cherry Cough Drop” prism over gold. Who knows what these colors look like at 32 feet down?
Normally, the #5 Swedish Pimples or the #5 Jigging Rapalas are the ideal size to catch both walleyes and yellow perch, but when the current is stronger, upsizing them to #6 or #7 keeps them from sailing too far from the hole and out of the fishfinder sonar range.
These lures have good calling power to attract the attention of any passing or nearby fish, but are small enough to not spook neutral or even negative-mood fish. As long as the lure still has a piece of emerald shiner attached, walleyes will eventually take the bait, most of the time.
Time after time, my experience has been that if a walleye loses interest in a lure and subsequently fades from the fishfinder screen, the bait will invariably be devoid of any minnows.
Since the winter ‘eyes often range from 5 to 12 pounds in size, these Lake Erie walleyes are gluttonous. We bait each treble hook on the lures with a whole emerald shiner through the head. This keeps them attached while we jig in 2-foot lifts and falls to attract fish. Smaller walleyes also ravage what anglers from elsewhere consider the excess bait, too.
When yellow perch are in an aggressive feeding mood, they will attack these same lures, too. However, when the electronics indicate that there are still more perch down there that are too timid to bite the lure, I use a hand-tied “Perch Rig” to catch additional neutral and negative-mood perch.
This setup has a pair of undressed long-shank #6 Mustad hooks attached via short loops with a sinker on the bottom. Some call it a crappie or bullhead rig.
To up the odds of better results when the sonar shows that walleyes are mixed in with perch, my fishing partners and I use a technique that I call “tag-team” fishing.
Tag-Team Fishing Explained
The tag-team method that I refer to is to target the perch whenever they are present on the fishfinder, even at the expense of possibly missing out on catching a walleye also on the screen.
Walleyes can be caught in Lake Erie 12 months a year. But yellow perch have become more difficult to catch as they have switched to predominantly feeding on the invasive spiny water flea and other invertebrates during the summer and fall.
Winter has become the best time of year to bag good numbers of this literal “Erie Gold,” which retails from $19.99 to $22.50 per pound locally.
While my partners continue to jig with the lure to keep the present school interested and/or attract new fish to the area, I continue to collect the perch with plain minnows before the school leaves. My shanty mates are rewarded when they catch the walleyes that come to see what the fuss is all about that has attracted the school of perch.
When the water is clear enough, I use an underwater camera to help catch the timid ones, by timing my hook sets to catch the perch that suck in and spit out the bait. The bites from these bonus fish would often go undetected otherwise.
When more walleyes than perch begin to show up, or it appears that I have mopped up all of the perch below us at the moment, I switch back to the lure to double up on the noise to attract some new fish to the area under our shanty.
Whenever the sonar indicates small fish that look like perch accumulating under the shanty, I hang up the jigging rod and drop down the perch rig again.
Jerry likes getting more bang for his buck and is more reluctant than I am to switch to the perch rig until he has his walleye limit. Uncle Tom and brother Ron less conspicuously prefer walleyes, so they only switch to the perch rig when there is a school below us.
I would rather catch (and eat) more yellow perch, so my tag-team system works out splendidly for me and whoever I am fishing with that day. They attract them … and I catch them.
Most days, we end up with a mixed bucket of walleyes and yellow perch and split the bounty, so we both win. Each of us ends up with equal numbers of tasty fillets for our team effort.
There was a period of stable weather during our last ice fishing season when we limited out on ‘eyes and perch for several days straight. Everybody was happy that week, although my thumbs were shredded from the serrated gill flaps of the hundreds of perch that I caught and cleaned.
Not only does this strategy work at Put-in-Bay, but I have also used it on the ice at Catawba Point and near the Toledo water intake in other winters with other fishing partners. Without a doubt, I’m sure it can work in your favorite hard-water locales this season, too.
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