Page 24 - Mid America Boating - January 2025 issue

It’s a Shore Thing

JANUARY 2025 [ MID-AMERICA BOATING ] 24
Great Lake Erie fishing

holds even more angling promises

By D’Arcy Patrick Egan come in the future.
With excellent management of the Lake
Lake Erie is a sport fisherman’s paradise, a Erie fishery by the Ohio Division of Wild-
jewel among the Great Lakes mostly known life and its partners in Ontario, Michigan,
for its plentiful walleye, a very popular Pennsylvania and New York, which manage
game fish that often steals the spotlight. Lake Erie with the Great Lakes Fishery
Almost a thousand licensed fishing Commission, fishing may seem to be
guides will be in operation in 2025 at its zenith, especially in Ohio.
along its shoreline, and daily bag A major reason for optimism
limits of walleye for anglers are has been the hard work done
quite common. to enhance Lake Erie, and its
Veterans, however, know fishery.
that Lake Erie provides fishing The recovery of the Ohio trib-
opportunities year round, catch- utaries of Lake Erie after centu-
ing a wide variety of game fish. ries of pollution has been almost
Yellow perch, smallmouth bass, magical along the Cuyahoga, Black
steelhead trout and channel catfish and Ashtabula rivers. The Cuyahoga
fishing are also making waves. River was put into national focus when oil
It’s a delicious menu of angling and, slicks on the river in downtown Cleveland
surprisingly, it is only going to get better. caught fire in June 1969.
Just as the walleye fishery has blossomed Newspapers had warned of the confligra-
over the last few decades, there’s more to tion, and for good reason. The Cuyahoga
River first burned, according to Dan Egan’s
excellent book, “The Death and Life of the
Walleye tournament angler and com- Great Lakes,” in 1868. And again in 1883,
mercial jet pilot Ryan Buddie of Am- 1912 and during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
herst, Ohio shows off a trophy Lake Erie The Cuyahoga River was so pristine once
walleye caught caught during an April upon a time that pollution-sensitive brook
2024 NWT Tournament in Port Clinton, trout were a favorite fish of the local folks.
Ohio. (Photo: D’Arcy Patrick Egan) But pollution eliminated brook trout centu-