Fishing
Hollingsworth is walleye wizard
The cycle of walleye wanderings is down around the Western New York waters of Lake Erie.
This seasonal year, the eastward-moving schools of Ohio ’eyes didn’t arrive off Dunkirk Harbor until sometime in early August, just in time for the Cabela’s Masters Walleye Circuit out of Dunkirk Harbor on two of three days last weekend.
Near Buffalo, native-born ’eyes have been popping up but their presence has been inconsistent.
Buffalo Small Boat Harbor anglers depend on good year-class production for nice catches of both eater- and trophy-sized walleye. Dunkirk Harbor boaters, and trollers from other open-water ports, look for the arrival of bunches of mainly female Ohio fish to arrive and feed heavily in area waters early and throughout the summer and early-fall fishing season.
Department of Environmental Conservation officials continually are looking for ways to monitor these movements, including frequent trips with the research vessel Argo out of the Lake Erie unit station at Dunkirk. Occasionally, Ohio-tagged walleye are caught and reported from various sites in New York State waters.
Here’s a breakdown on what’s up with the walleye fishing in Erie’s open waters and good things happening along near-Buffalo structures —plus a preview of what we might learn about migrant Ohio ’eyes.
Masters winners
Bob Hollingsworth has a way with prize ’eyes. The Kenmore angler has been a walleye wizard for decades. As an early member of the New York Walleye Association, formed more than a quarter century ago, Hollingsworth has always been willing to share info on how and where to waylay walleye.
As a regular on both recreational fishing and on the professional walleye trails and circuits, Hollingsworth knows things can go poorly or well and plans for the latter.
His plans worked out well during the Cabela’s Masters Walleye Circuit competition at Dunkirk despite waves his partner, Jim Navis of Grand Island, described as “3-to 4- footers both days.”
Cabela’s officials plan this two-day tournament for a three-day window to allow for the possibility of bad weather. Very bad weather greeted entrants Friday morning, so contest days were set for Saturday and Sunday.
The weather improved, but entrants still had to face a steady chop. “A thunderstorm moved through on Saturday and it was overcast most of the time, but we could fish most of the time both days,” Navis said.
Hollingsworth headed west early Saturday and worked waters off and west of Van Buren point, areas where good walleye schools had begun showing a week or more before the tourney.
“They held close to bottom early in the morning and then moved up as it got brighter,” he said, noting the best overall depth was at 72 feet both days.
He often includes worm harnesses in his program, but big fish for Navis and him came mainly on minnow-type baits such as Renosky’s 5-inch Cristalinas.
Theirs was the only team weighing in more than 30 pounds both days. On Saturday, they logged 32.68 pounds, the third highest total, and on Sunday they brought in 33.39 pounds for a 66.07-pound total, more than 10 pounds ahead of the second-place team’s 56.02 pounds.
The pair has a dollar bet on first and biggest fish during these contests. Navis gladly handed Hollingsworth two dollars when they accepted their $10,300 in cash winnings.
Buffalo walleye ways
Gasport resident Capt. Joe Fonzi lives closer to Lake Ontario but spends much of his chartering and fun fishing time heading out of Buffalo Small Boat Harbor for bass and walleye.
“I’d been one of those trollers with Dipsy Divers and down rigs for years and decided to get into drift fishing a few years ago,” he said Wednesday afternoon after a morning of drenching downpours.
Unpredicted high winds and pelting rain could not keep Fonzi from finding his favorite rock humps off Buffalo Harbor. Most small boaters would take a bye on fishing this day. Just two trailer rigs were parked at the Small Boat Harbor when we left at 6:45 a. m. We were the only ones fishing on open water from 7 a. m. to about noon that day.
Safe—or at least somewhat safer —passage across these choppy waters were assured with Fonzi’s new charter boat. At 21 feet, his Ranger 621 Fisherman might be considered a small boat, but powered with a 250 HP 4-stroke Yamaha and piloted well into and across Erie’s notorious short-chop waves, we only experienced one “deck washer” during the entire outing.
“I’ve got spots in Canada and here,” Fonzi said as we set up well off Seneca Shoals in areas where most boaters had given up on walleye weeks earlier.
Part of Fonzi’s success comes from finding good schools of feeding fish. But his crowning achievement comes from picking off subtle walleye hits and setting the hook at just the right time.
“They were swallowing it yesterday and Sunday, but today they’re just tapping it,” he said of earlier trips as he reeled in his third or fourth ’eye as I rounded up four gobies and a big-shouldered sheepshead.
His hook-setting skills resulted in two walleye doubleheaders.
“We averaged over 20 fish a day earlier and one day we had a limit in less than an hour,” he said as we switched to bass baits and gear for the last hour of wave riding and rain drenching.
For updates and Thumbs Up Guide Service chartering options, check with him at 998-8273 or 438-2366.
Wandering walleye
Charter captain Gary Marcinkowski has worked wavy days for walleye on Erie waters and came in one day this summer with a fish carrying a radio transmitter.
Ohio Wildlife implanted the radio rig in this walleye at Sandusky Bay and it was tracked in Ohio waters in 2007 and again in 2008. Officials lost signals from this wandering walleye this summer and data suggests the fish migrated to New York State waters during warmer weather.
When Marcinkowski got the fish the unit’s battery had died. But the fish proved interesting to Ohio biologists. Marcinkowski will share data from that fish during a talk at the New York Walleye Association meeting Tuesday.
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