Fishing in Michigan Lake Erie

At the time of The Toledo War, when Michigan and Ohio almost came to blows, most people figured Michigan lost because Ohio kept control of most of western Lake Erie, whereas Michigan had to settle for the then howling wilderness of the Upper Peninsula as compensation. But 150 years after the state militias laid down their arms, hordes of Ohio anglers make the cash registers of UP tackle shops jingle, and Michigan still has access to Lake Erie and what is unquestionably the finest walleye fishery in the world.

Michigan’s share of the shallowest, warmest, and second smallest Great Lake is a 50-mile stretch of shoreline between Monroe and the Ohio border in the extreme southeast corner of the state. That’s more than enough, because only 20 miles to the south is Ohio’s Maumee River, which each spring sees an annual walleye spawning run that averages an incredible 10 million fish. Any angler who wants the experience of catching a batch of smaller fish within two hours and then spending the rest of the morning culling 8-pounders needs to visit these waters in spring, just after the run.

The sonar screens in the western basin of the lake are black with post-spawn walleye for miles off the shorelines, and although these fish are usually in a neutral mood, their numbers are so fantastic that 10 minutes of trolling puts a crankbait in front of so many fish, a strike is almost guaranteed.

Michigan anglers launch from ports like Luna Pier and Monroe, but those who fish here regularly also carry a license for Ohio, which lets them work the waters around the Bass Islands and Put-in-Bay, and Ontario, giving them access to Pelee Island and the Canadian shore.

And although the walleye is king (or queen, in the case of the 8- to 12-pound spring giants), western Lake Erie, which has a deeper basin than its eastern counterpart, also has excellent populations of 10- to 15-pound steelhead, coho salmon of similar size, and chinooks that average 12 pounds and run to 20.

Smallmouth and largemouth bass and northern pike offer excellent fishing along the Lake Erie shoreline and offshore shallow reefs. Most anglers prefer to cast jigs or crankbaits. Yellow perch continue to hold their own here despite a general decline in the rest of the Great Lakes.

Despite its size, Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, averaging 40 feet and having a maximum depth of 210 feet. It is also the warmest, routinely exceeding 70°F in midsummer. One of the great ironies is that most of the walleye in its waters today were restocked from outside sources after overfishing and pollution destroyed the original stocks by the 1960s. In fact, the walleye subspecies found here, called the blue pike by local anglers, is now thought to be extinct.