Moving Deeper?

Nature seems to be moving slower this year on Lake Erie. Water temperatures are finally starting to rise after a cooler spring. The spring wind and waves seemed more frequent then previous years.

I have been recording all legal walleye I catch using a cloud based app that I created at the end of 2020. The app automatically captures local weather conditions, lure utilized, and technique used. The user enters surface water temperature and trolling speed from their graph. The app now contains data on 1,529 walleye caught throughout the western and central basin of Lake Erie. This allows for rich AI modeling giving great predictions of where and how to catch walleye based on past performance and current air and water conditions.

For some comparison, In May 2021, our fish were caught in water temperatures between 50.1 to 64.7 degrees F. 70% came on crankbaits, 25% on worm harness and 5% on spoons. Gold and purple were the best colors. This May, water temperatures were cooler between 50.0 to 62.1 degrees. All fish were caught with crankbaits as the worm harness and spoon bite were nonexistent. Also only 6% of the May 2024 crankbait catches used snap or inline weights compared to 23% snap weight use in 2021 suggesting the fish were much shallower this year. White and chrome baits have dominated during May 2024.

Today, June 15, we finally started to see a typical late May pattern begin to emerge as the bigger fish like the two pictured below were caught deeper, relying on dispy divers and downriggers. I imagine with the >90 degree days forecasted for this week this pattern will only get stronger as water temperatures rise and the fish move deeper. Hopefully the fish we found today aboard the Reel Chaos will stick around next week during the 2024 Whiskey Island Boat Club Walleye Tournament!