PORT CLINTON — It was about 35 years ago, but Mike McCroskey clearly recalls the scene. Early on an April morning, with his boat floating above one of the Lake Erie reef areas, McCroskey was all alone on the big water.
“I was the only one out there, and I never saw another boat around,” the veteran charter captain said about his first trips that took on the spring chill, and the challenge of enticing finicky walleye to bite in the frigid water. “Now, some days in April it looks like it’s summer and everyone’s drift fishing — there’s boats all over the place.”
That is McCroskey’s account of his experience with the evolution of “the jig bite” — that unique period on the walleye calendar when a lot of the high-tech tools and cutting edge tackle gets put on pause, and anglers step back in time and rely on one of the oldest and simplest of lures — the jig.
This is a weighted head, usually made of lead, molded onto a hook, and dressed with an inch or so of hairlike material. Jigs are fished vertically during this Lake Erie angling session, usually tipped with minnows and bounced off the bottom to create a presentation of any easy meal at a time when the walleye are often preoccupied with spawning. These fish have been staging throughout the Western Basin and will move en masse around the Lake Erie reef complexes to spawn.
On the long road to figuring out the nuances of the Lake Erie jig bite, McCroskey was first inquisitive, then inventive, and finally creative.
“I had heard about some pros that fished early spring jigs in the walleye lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and wondered why something like that wouldn’t work here on Lake Erie,” he said.
McCroskey started with fuzzy grubs, a jig variation with a short plastic tube body and a colorful hairlike tail, but those did not produce an abundance of fish. Trial and error, experimentation and old fashioned ingenuity produced what McCroskey considers a “perfected” technique for catching walleye when the bites are often very subtle.
“They don’t chase it down and attack the bait like they will do in much warmer water,” the skipper of Hawg Hanger Charters said. “A lot of times it is a soft bite and hard to detect if you are not using the right equipment for this type of fishing.”
McCroskey’s ideal set-up consists of an ultra sensitive graphite rod, and a spinning reel looped with FireLine in 14-pound test. He said that line will not stretch, allowing the angler to get an immediate hook-set when responding to a bite.
“The graphite rods and the FireLine make the difference,” he said. “We’ve fished this time of year with other methods and you just don’t do as well without the graphite rod and the right line.”
Another key is maintaining constant contact with the bottom, McCroskey said, allowing the jig to “tick” the bottom repeatedly, creating a little flash that will draw the walleye’s attention.
“It is so important to get that tick off the bottom every time. I recommend a very light lift, and then ticking the jig off the bottom with every motion,” he said.
McCroskey uses three-fourths ounce jigs most of the time, but will go to a full ounce-sized jig if the lake is churning up a three or four foot chop. Any chop heavier than that makes detecting the light bites impossible, he said. “It is imperative to fish a heavy jig so you keep that contact with the bottom, no matter what the lake is doing.”
And McCroskey is always fishing on the drift, never anchoring in order to “cover more water.” He spends most of his time fishing in just 12-14 feet of water, but will move deeper when the circumstances demand.
While he usually prefers jigs dressed with purple hair, McCroskey said chartreuse, white and other colors are also effective. “I’ve seen fish taken on all different colors, so sometimes you just have to experiment and see what works best on that particular day.”
Bob Barnhart of Maumee-based tackle supplier Netcraft said the early spring anglers on Lake Erie need to adjust their techniques and adapt to the cold water and the often lethargic walleye.
“The approach right now is much like it is for ice fishing,” Barnhart said about fishing the jig bite. “The water is still pretty cold and you have to slow things down a bit.”
One element of the early spring jig rigging that McCroskey insists is more critical than any other is the stinger hook. These are tiny treble hooks that are connected to the main hook’s shank with a short piece of monofilament, and trail below the jig, with the minnow attached.
“The stinger hooks are very effective, because a lot of times these fish are just sucking the minnow in, so you will not feel a hard strike,” he said. “They will grab the jig on the drop, and the stinger hooks pick up those real sensitive bites. I’ll bet three-fourths of the fish we catch are caught on the stinger hook, especially early in the spring.”
McCroskey works out of a 27-foot Sportcraft Fisherman based at Wild Wings Marina, located west of here, off State Rt. 2. He can be reached at 419-460-7815.
“With this jig bite, when conditions are right, the fishing can be phenomenal,” he said. “You gotta dress right, because with a little breeze across that water it can be real cold out there, but the results can mean a limit by nine or 10 in the morning, with lots of big fish. There’s really nothing like it.”
While there have been small armadas of fishing boats out on the ice-free lake over the past month, with most using a trolling approach to pick up migrating fish, McCroskey expects the jig bite to really heat up by the first of April.
“Now I will see boats and fishermen from all over this part of the country out there each spring,” he said. “The word got out about this fantastic early season fishery which is right here in our backyard, so people want to experience it.”
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
First Published March 14, 2017, 4:09 a.m.
