Sunday, March 28, 2010

Middle Bass Island & Lake Erie Fishing Forecast for 2010


Lake Erie is the largest freshwater commercial fishery in the world. Of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie has just 2% of the total water, but 50% of the fish. This means that Lake Erie has more fish for human consumption than all the four other Great Lakes combined.

The Lake Erie Committee of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission (LEL) recently concluded that 2010 will be a good year for walleye fishing. That's because the 2007 class of walleye was better than expected. As a result, fisherman have a summer bag limit of six walleye and a spring spawning season limit of four between March 1 and April 30th.

More than 1 million walleye are expected to be caught by Ohio sport fishermen this year. The LEL gives Ohio fisherman a 1,124,000 quota of walleye for this year.

2003 was the record walleye hatch and those fish will be from 20 to 28 inches this year.

Yellow perch fishing is also expected to rise by more than 9% to more than 13 million pounds. Ohio sport fishermen are expected to catch alomost 3 million pounds of this Lake Erie total. Commercial fishing from Ontario Canada are expected to get almost 6 million pounds.

The Middle Bass marina is scheduled to open May 1 and has free boat launching before then and throughout the season.

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