April 2016
Episode 14
Spring Lake Michigan Lakers
Show Date: April 2nd & 3rd, 2016
Location: Lake Michigan, Milwaukee, WI
Guide: Charter Captain Brian Settele [414-559-9238 | fishchaserguideservice.com]
April is a very exciting time on the west coast of Lake Michigan.
Firstly, you’ve got the coho migrating up the shoreline, and they should be plentiful in the coming weeks. The coho are the best eating fish in the Trout/Salmon family in Lake Michigan, and will be a good species to target once they arrive.
For today though, we are targeting Lake Trout. The laker season just opened on March 1st, and we couldn’t be more excited to get on of these hooked - they are a blast to catch. There is no way to describe what it’s like to cast a jig out, and hook one of these fish. The fight that they put on is unbelievable, and an absolute rush.
Episode 15
Last Ice of the Year
Show Date: April 9th & 10th, 2016
Location: Eagle Lake, Ontario, Canada - Near Vermilion Bay, Ontario
Guide: Andy Myers Lodge [888-727-5865 - www.andymyerslodge.com]
We like to squeeze in one last ice trip in spring each year; and to find ice, we need to head north. As we do just about every year, we get a group of buddies together to have one last walk on the ice before it’s gone. This year we are fishing out of Andy Myers Lodge in Ontario Canada.
With the trip taking place in spring, we can usually get the best of both worlds when it comes to weather. As is the case this year, we have great solid ice, as well as great spring weather with sunny skies and temps in the 40’s.
Fishing out of Andy Myers Lodge, we have the opportunity to target a long list of species. On this trip we’re running the gamut, targeting walleye, northern pike, crappie, trout, and eel pout.
The mixture of beaver dams and jigging make it a perfect sendoff of the 2015/16 ice season.
Episode 16
Lake Erie Eye Bonanza
Show Date: April 16th & 17th, 2016
Location: Lake Erie, Toledo, Ohio
Guide: Captain Paul Pacholski [1-800-798-1218 | eriehopper.com]
If you like to catch as well as eat fish, then Lake Erie should be your walleye destination.
Lake Erie is well known as a walleye factory, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, Lake Erie was once so polluted that the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire.
Quoted from Cleveland Historical: “By the 1960s, Lake Erie had become extremely polluted, in part due to the heavy industry that lined its shores in Cleveland and other cities. Factories dumped pollutants into the lake and the waterways that flowed into it (like the Cuyahoga River) without much government oversight. Waste from city sewers made its way into the lake too, as did fertilizer and pesticides from agricultural runoff.”
“The burning river and the "dead" lake were major impetuses for the Federal government to step in and deal with water pollution in Cleveland and across the nation. In 1972, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, a measure that tightened regulations on industrial dumping. That same year, the United States and Canada signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in an attempt to lower the amount of pollutants entering the Great Lakes.”
As the lake cleared up, wildlife began to take hold, among that wildlife the walleye began to thrive. Walleye and perch combine to be a billion dollar industry on Lake Erie, which is pretty obvious by our trip there. Two limits of walleye is as many days, and with not possession limit, any angler that visits can come home with many pounds of fillets.
Source: Michael Rotman, “Lake Erie ,” Cleveland Historical, accessed April 15, 2016, http://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/58.
Episode 17
Wisconsin Weather & Walleyes
Show Date: April 23rd & 24th, 2016
Location: Bay of Green Bay, Wisconsin
Guide: Brett Jolly [715-581-5678 | captainjollycharters.com]
The saying goes in Wisconsin “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” That saying is painfully apparent in this weeks episode, where we head up to the Bay of Green Bay to fishing the river mouths for jumbo walleyes that are making their way out of the river post-spawn.
Our guide, Charter Captain Brett Jolly, has been fishing the Bay for may years, and knows many different tactics to find these fish, which is illustrated in this show. From pulling three-ways, to staring board trolling, to casting plastics - we do it all in this show.
Episode 18
Beautiful Day for Panfish
Show Date: April 30th & May 1st, 2016
Location: Waukesha Co., Wisconsin
Guide: Matt Bichanich – [Uncle Josh– unclejosh.com]
We love the great weather days that surprise us in the spring. The day that we headed out with Matt Bichanich, it was 85 degrees and sunny. It turned into the perfect panfish day that we’d hoped for.
We love fishing plastics, but there are times when the good old fashioned live minnow or crawler does the trick. That was our experience on a Waukesha County lake while fishing a bay for panfish. The area was LOADED with fish, but they were super finicky; so as we were trying everything in our tackle box, the live bait proved to be the ticket.
We had so much fun going old school on this episode.
January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December