The somber announcement came just recently — the Midwest Open Ice Fishing Tournament, one of the largest frozen angling extravaganzas in this part of the country and an event that creates a mid-winter buzz throughout the Irish Hills, had been cancelled because of the lack of a solid foundation — ice.
Originally, the tournament had been scheduled for Jan. 29 on Devils Lake, but it was first postponed for two weeks due to thin ice or the lack of ice, with the hope winter would return and the surface of the lake could again support the fishing crowd. At that point, Feb. 12 was set as the reschedule date. But tournament organizer Tom Knutson had to scrub things for good after checking the ice again, just a few days before the makeup date.
“With what we have now and the current forecast, there is no way we can put on the tournament,” Knutson said at the time. “Safety is our number one concern. We have no way of knowing where the safe spots and unsafe spots are.”
But ... that lack of ice one place can mean the opening of unexpected fishing options elsewhere. Western Lake Erie, which was sealed by rock-hard ice two-feet thick about this time in 2014 and ’15, is a sea of open water in 2017. Out on that open water — a freakish February flotilla of fishing boats.
“Open water fishing has been happening from Huron all the way west, in the areas we typically ice fish,” said walleye pro Ross Robertson of Toledo, who has had the snowmobile parked in the garage and his custom-outfitted Ranger boat out on the lake.
Anglers have been catching Erie walleye jigging and trolling. Robertson has opted to troll, and he has hooked up some real giants. On one pass, he had four fish on that went over 10 pounds each. In keeping with his strict catch-and-release policy for big fish, all of those monsters went back in the lake, and should be ready to spawn in another month or so.
Robertson assumes this February open water action on the big lake will mean an early spring bite, if the weather doesn't change dramatically, again. But in the meantime, in advance of that spring spawning fishing bonanza, anglers have been catching Erie walleye jigging and trolling in the open water.
“The only holdups have been those days where it has been blowing 20-plus, and a day or so afterward when the water turns to mud,” Robertson said. “It takes a few days to clear up, and it’s been as consistent as it gets this time of year.”
Robertson has been trolling snap-weighted stick baits low in the water column, and almost on the bottom at times. He said low-and-slow is the key, since despite the warmer days, the water temperature still is in the mid-30s.
Bob Barnhart, the owner of Maumee-based tackle supplier Netcraft, said he has been closely observing and intensely fishing the late fall and winter bite on Lake Erie since the early nineties, and he thinks the ice fishing bonanzas of recent years have turned the attention of a legion of distant anglers to Lake Erie’s gold mine.
“I think the ice fishing we experienced a few years ago will likely change Lake Erie fishing forever,” Barnhart said. “We had those great ice fishing years and guys were coming here from all over, and they were enjoying the fruits of Lake Erie like even the locals hadn’t seen before. Now this year we don’t have the ice, but these guys still come and bring their boats.”
Barnhart said on recent weekends, the parking lots from Huron to Catawba have displayed this increased attention on the lake’s winter open-water fishery. There are a few Ohio license plates, but the majority of the trucks and trailers show Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and even a few from as far away as Nebraska.
“It was so quiet up here that not many knew about it for years,” Barnhart said. “Just a few years ago, there would be maybe three cars in the bait shop parking lot in Huron. Then people started following this phenomenon closely on the Internet, and guys would come here, enjoy great success, then post reports or go home and tell their buddies about it. The next thing you know, we’ve got 30 or 40 boats off Huron on a day in February.”
Barnhart said these hardy winter fishermen utilize the latest in technology, electronics and tackle, and get better and better about locking in on the seasonal movements of big walleye in Lake Erie.
“Now the only way these guys won’t get out on the lake is if there is skim ice,” he said. “Fishing through the fall and into the winter, ice or no ice, gives these fishermen 10 to 11 months of intel, instead of seven or eight. I really believe they are getting very good at figuring these fish out.”
WILD GAME DINNER: The Cooley Canal Yacht Club at 12235 Bono Road in Curtice will conduct its 15th Annual Wild Game Feed on April 22, with the doors opening at 4 p.m. Tickets for the event call for a $25 donation. The menu features venison, buffalo, turkey, turtle, pheasant, perch, walleye, hog, raccoon, salmon, and muskrat. There also will be a number of raffles and door prizes. For more information, call Dick Knitz at 419-346-3687, Lori Pietrowski at 419-345-4664, or Jeff Siefke at 419-265-7821.
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
First Published February 19, 2017, 5:11 a.m.
