Trending
Due to a small craft advisory from Buffalo to Ripley, with 15 to 25 mph winds, with waves predicted at three to six feet and occasional waves of seven feet or more, Big Fish Friday, set for today, has been canceled for the Innovative Outdoors Walleye Challenge at Chadwick Bay in Dunkirk. The mandatory Captain’s Meeting for the main competition event set for Saturday will still be held on Friday from 6 to 6:30 p.m. at the Clarion Pavilion.
Storm fronts and big winds can create waves of immense proportion with short cycle times. The combination can be lethal for fishermen in smaller boats and even for those in larger fishing craft. For the last few weeks, the weather factors have controlled access to Lake Erie from New York to Ohio. With the lake so full of plump walleye schools here in the Eastern Basin, there are many disappointed anglers – both, tournament competitors and non-competitor recreational anglers.
The weather affects the fish too, but walleye are especially adaptable to changing thermal layers, reversing eddy currents, and forage location transitions that come from heavy wind and nasty weather. The problem is, the Lake Erie is big, at 240 miles long and nearly 10,000 square miles. When the fish move, the fishermen have to find them all over again. That means moving often and hoping that when a school of walleye are located, wherever that may be, the fish can be persuaded to strike an angler lure.
When the thermocline is homogenized into a single temperature top to bottom, finding the fish gets much more difficult. The walleye can go into a day-long thermal distress condition, triggering a strike can be tough. Deep scattered walleyes can be the hardest to catch. It can be a puzzle and a mystery to identify what color, what lure, what sound and what action it will take to catch fish after a big blow.
The usual West to East current flow in Lake Erie can briefly change with shifting wind direction and velocity. Add a changing barometer with the unpleasant weather and the variables that hungry fish key on are suddenly new and undefined. Many anglers will look to bottom structure and shoreline points for locations with stable water currents that forage tend to seek during and after nasty weather. Anglers may find the predator walleye prize that could win a tournament in such places. The final competition event weigh-in at the Clarion pavilion should be exciting.
The fishing hours for the Main Competition event on Saturday are 7:00 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Viewers from across Western New York and anywhere in the country can watch the weigh-in on live website-TV for both days starting at 4:30 p.m. Visit https://innovative-outdoors.com/live-leaderboard. The winning team will receive $7,500 with cash payouts to
10th place, and the big fish winner on the main competition day will receive $1,200 with cash payouts to third place. If the winning team is driving a Vexus boat, the first-place prize is doubled. For more information on the rules and details of the contest, visit https://innovative-outdoors.com/event-details. Good luck to all the teams.