Seasonal Movement for Lake Erie Walleye - Erie Drifter Sportfishing

We have been chasing these fantastic walleyes for over 30 years and every year we learn something new about Lake Erie Walleye. This is our opinion of their patterns, movement throughout the season and how to catch some amazing Walleye in Lake Erie!

Being in the right place at the right time to intercept such movements is a thing of beauty. Your choice of pursuing monster walleyes or large numbers of spawning walleyes while trolling or casting. The unnaturally high concentration of huge fish makes every bite a potential delight. This is about as good as it gets for catching numbers of fish exceeding ten pounds, with teens not unrealistic. We are speaking of the spring spawn when water temperature reaches around 40 degrees.

During the peak of the spawning run, walleyes relating to shoals/reefs combinations lie in the flats and sand bars during the day, moving shallow at night to spawn. This exciting time of year usually starts in April in Oak Harbor OH, Lake Erie's Western Basin. The walleyes will start congregating around the reef complex, north of the Davis Besse power plant until the water temperature reaches over 50 degrees. During the day, drift over reefs with jig and minnow combos, or troll with crankbaits or worm harness rig's tipped with night crawlers off the deep edges of these shoals, day or night. We also have walleyes that spawn along our rocky shorelines and host large numbers of visiting walleyes from the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair. This is the best time to cast out a reef runner lure around our shallow reefs, night walleye fishing, one of my favorite times of the year to catch monsters. 

Larger Lake Erie walleye are temperature sensitive, generally heading east from Western Lake Erie's prime spawning grounds to feed in cooler water. Small walleye have a tendency to hang around Western Lake Erie into the summer months. As Lake Erie's water reach's the 60 degree mark the natural migration is East to colder, deeper water such as Canada's Pelee Island area and Huron OH. There is also a natural migration from Lake Erie to Lake St. Clair and on to Lake Huron to the North. Instead of guessing at fish movements, they now have high-tech devices to monitor walleye travel patterns, 165 walleye were outfitted with transmitters last year in the Toussaint Reef area of Western Lake Erie and we have heard another 600 walleyes will be tagged this year. Lake Erie's walleye can swim like crazy and travel long distances seemingly overnight, so as we push into August and September walleye are moving in suspending mode in the deep waters off Ashtabula OH. Walleyes are primarily caught trolling using dipsy divers and tru-trip jet divers pulled off planner boards using spoons. 

We believe that the majority of walleyes that spawn in the western basin return back to the South Bass

Island area some time in late November early December. When Lake Erie allows us to capture some of its bounty this time of year, I believe this is my favorite time to catch the big hogs, day or night! These walleyes always come back here to feed on our ample amount of gizzard shad and lake shiners that also seem to embed here. Ice fishing on Lake Erie is always the best in this same area the Bass Islands off Port Clinton, OH," we believe they winter here". Starting in March these monster walleyes head to the reefs again for there ultimate destination the largest natural reef complex in the Western Basin.

If you have any questions about these walleye patterns in Lake Erie, please give us a call or visit our website www.eriedrifter.com 

Captain Tom Straus 

Erie Drifter Sportfishing