Walleye action heats up on Lake Erie. Here's how to catch the big ones

The walleye are starting to bite in Lake Erie.

I spent a couple of days last week with two members of my family on the Great Lake, fishing for those tasty fish and our captain, Keith Eshbaugh, made it easy to do.

Eshbaugh, 55, of Cochranton, Crawford County, operates Dutch Fork Fishing Charters and is a partner and co-owner of Tudor Hook-n-Nook at Elk Creek Sports. He’s one of many charter services in the area.

His service provides the fishing poles, boat and other gear, so guests only need to provide a Pennsylvania fishing license with the Lake Erie permit. A combination Lake Erie/trout permit allows for the catch of a hefty steelhead or brown trout.

We slowly trolled the lake using minnow replica crankbaits and nightcrawler worm harnesses. It didn’t take too long before someone was shouting: “Fish on!” Walleyes put up a nice fight swimming from about 50 feet down.

Walleye need to be 15 inches to keep, but that’s not a problem for Lake Erie. The fish we caught were 18-25 inches long, the average size catch for this waterway.

He considers any fish over 2 feet long to be a really nice fish, and it seems each's year class of fish are getting bigger. The past five or six years they had a tremendous spawn, and “there’s just gazillions of walleye out here come June and July," he said.

Over the years, he has netted several large fish that weighed 13.5 pounds. Last year, his biggest walleye was 10.25 pounds.

In the spring, these fish come into the shoreline where the steelhead tributaries flow into the lake. The young steelhead trout, known as smolts, leave the creeks and provide an easy meal for the predator fish. The walleye “just sit outside the streams and wait. Anything that’s silver and blue or rainbow works really, really well,” he said about lure colors to catch springtime walleye.

For his minnow imitation lures in the summer months, he suggests chartreuse and orange, gold and purple, and white and orange combinations. He also recommends nightcrawler worms on harnesses that have spinning blades and colored beads.

“These fish have never seen a nightcrawler in their life, but they love them,” he said.

The good news is that the best fishing of the summer is yet to come. The water temperature was in the high 50s, and Eshbaugh said the fish become really active and aggressive when the water gets above 60 degrees.

“Because of the cold, cold spring we’ve had up here, the water is still cold, and the fish are pretty finicky. It will just get better and better as the water warms up,” he explained.

Usually June through September are the best months for walleye in Erie. To fish without a guide, he suggests calling a local bait shop in Erie to see what’s going on, where to go for fish and what to take.

“Generally, if you come out with a bottom bouncer and a worm, you can catch these fish,” he said. The bottom bouncer is a heavy weight that keeps the line connected to the bottom of the lake while allowing the nightcrawler worm harness to freely float a short distance away. The fish are moving to different depths of the lake throughout the summer and year.

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Why fish for walleye?

When thinking about other sport fish like bass or trout, Eshbaugh has always preferred walleye.

“They are more difficult to catch, they are very finicky, you have to change your color selection to what they want, hourly if not daily. For the most part, they are just a lot more to figure out, and I like the game of trying to figure them out," he said.

He’s competed in the professional walleye circuit for 15 years but has been fishing most of his life.

“I’ve been on this lake for over 30 years,” he said. “The '80s were good; there were schools of walleye miles long and then we got zebra mussels and gobies (small bait fish) in here that cleared up the lake, and the bite has changed. We just have to adapt."

The zebra mussels filter out the microscopic plants in the water making the water clearer.

“You can see the bottom in 15 feet of water, and walleyes just don’t like that,” he said.

Eating walleye

“The perch and walleye are the best table fare, freshwater, in my opinion. They have nice white flaky meat, and you can do them in multiple ways, in the oven, in the fire. I like broiled and on the fire myself,” he said. Other people enjoy deep frying walleye as well.

Planning a walleye trip

When booking a fishing guide, he said, “look at what kind of boat they have, what type of fishing they are going to do.” Some charters set up the rods, and the clients are there to catch the fish when they bite. Other guides allow the anglers to be involved as much as they want.

Eshbaugh allowed us to cast the lines and work the baits. It was a learning opportunity as well as a time to battle some trophy predator fish.

When looking at the cost of hiring a charter, the trips are based on the numbers of hours you’ll be on the water. But keep in mind that the captain and crew members have more hours invested than the time they spend with their clients.

Each angler is permitted to keep six walleyes a day. If the limit is reached early in the trip, the charters can start fishing for other species like drum (sheepshead) and bass.

“We take them fishing for other species once they’re done.”

As far as time of day, he said the mornings are usually the best times, depending on the weather conditions.

“Wind from the east, the fish bite the least,” he said about the weather and high winds.  “The wind is a killer. The waves get too big to fish.”

Another piece of advice he offers to people wanting to fish on the lake is to dress warm. “When the breeze starts to blow, it’s always 10 degrees colder out here,” he said comparing it to being on the shore. “You can always take it off, but you can’t put it on if you don’t have it," so dress in layers.

The bottom line is that Lake Erie is an angler’s paradise. The fishing is top notch and is worth your time. From a variety of bass species to walleye and steelhead trout, the Great Lake has what you want.

Brian Whipkey is the outdoors columnist for USA TODAY Network sites in Pennsylvania. Contact him at bwhipkey@gannett.com and sign up for our weekly Go Outdoors PA newsletter email on this website's homepage under your login name. Follow him on Facebook @whipkeyoutdoors,Twitter @whipkeyoutdoors and Instagram at whipkeyoutdoors.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: How to fish for walleye in Pennsylvania's Lake Erie