Stash the rain gear and let’s go fishing

Weather clears for start of Walmart FLW Walleye Tour season

PORT CLINTON, Ohio – Word around town is that after a week of cold and rain, the walleye bite on Lake Erie is ready to bust loose.

That remains to be seen. What’s certain is that after a day of sitting around in motel rooms playing cards, watching TV and talking on the phone to the kids back home, the 124 pros and as many co-anglers gathered here for the start of the 2009 Walmart FLW Walleye Tour season are more than ready to bust loose.

And bust loose they did Thursday morning from the Nor’Easter Club on the south shore of Lake Erie. The bitter northeast wind has died, the sky is blue, and the rain that’s soaked the area for the past several days is now somewhere over Buffalo.

As the song goes, let’s get it started.

“Take everything you thought you knew and throw it out the window,” Robert Blosser of Poynette, Wis., said to his buddy and fellow pro Joe Okada of Fitchburg, Wis., as the pair sat side by side on the docks before the launch.

What? Was there nothing to be gleaned from a prefishing period that everyone agrees was the toughest they had ever seen?

“Absolutely nothing,” said Blosser, who along with Okada qualified for his first FLW Walleye Tour Championship last season. “Nobody’s found a consistent bite. We’re all starting over today.”

Which could make things interesting for the next three days, as pros vie for a top prize of $100,000 and co-anglers for $20,000.

Everyone knows Lake Erie in April is fickle, but fickle is merely frustrating. These conditions are downright confounding. The muddy Mississippi has nothing on Erie right now. Take the brightest crankbait in your box and toss it in the water, and it disappears in seconds, as visibility is maybe a couple inches at best. And the water is cold, very cold, like the-ice-went-out-just-last-week cold.

Blosser said the best he found was 44 degrees and that as he went farther east it got down to 37 degrees. Walleyes seldom bite aggressively in water that cold.

The combination of cold and murky water has many pros speculating that some type of rattling crankbait or perhaps a spinner rig might work best. At least that’s what most had rigged at takeoff this morning.

Now go find that needle in a haystack.

Takeoff each day is at 7 a.m. from the Nor’ Easter Club, 2801 Nor’Easter Cove Road in Port Clinton. Thursday and Friday’s weigh-ins will be at Waterworks Park at 3 p.m. Saturday’s final weigh-in begins at 4 p.m. at Walmart, 2826 E. Harbor Road in Port Clinton. Both takeoff and weigh-in are free and open to the public.

Today’s weather

Temperature at takeoff: 41 degrees

Sky: clear

Wind: NE at 5 mph

Barometric pressure: 30.32 inches and rising

Forecast: sunny with a high of 59 degrees; winds northeast at 10 to 20 mph