March 14, 2026

As most of the ice has cleared from the lake, walleye fishing is heating up on the western basin and steelhead are being caught from the central and eastern basin tributaries. The rivers remain stained and slightly higher than would be preferred due to the large amounts of rain earlier in the week. Expect steelhead to remain in the rivers for about the next month or so. Lake Erie will most likely be tore up for the next couple days with the extreme westerly winds the whole area experienced yesterday. NOAA weather buoy reporting gusts of 54 knots yesterday with sustained winds of 30+ knots. We will be launching our boats last week of March and will have a more in depth report of the walleye fishing off of Cleveland.

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April 18, 2026

Water temp is hovering around 52-53F. Trolling crankbaits from the East Light out to Bratenahl. 25-41FOW. P10s and bandits but mostly just P10s. Leads have ranged from 20-90' behind the planer boards. Our trolling speed has been consistently around 1.8. Only fished the eastside this week. Didn't have to venture to the Cuyahoga or Gold Coast to catch walleye

 

April 25, 2026​

The walleye are pretty much done with spawning as we are starting to catch very few walleye with eggs still in them. Water temperature off Cleveland is 53F. We've been concentrating our fishing around the mouth of the Cuyahoga or from 55th to Bratenahl. A combination of P10s and bandits have been working well. Most leads for either style of lure have been 20-80' back. Our trolling speed has been consistent around 1.8-2.0. 

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May 2, 2026

 

Only one fish this week still had eggs inside of it. So it's safe to say we are catching post-spawn walleye. Some days we'd see pockets of smaller migrating males and some days we'd be back into the big females. A key this week has been playing the wind. N winds are keeping the walleye close to shore. A south wind we've been finding the walleye 1-2 miles offshore in 31-41 feet of water. Still running P10s and bandits 20-80' back with a speed of 1.8-2.1. Walleye are being caught from the Cleveland shoreline.

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May 9, 2026

 

Walleye are still holding close to the Cleveland shoreline and harbor. Crankbaits are still the ticket to catching these post-spawn Lake Erie walleye. We've been targeting the top of the water column, running Smithwick Perfect 10's and deep Bandits 20-80' behind our planer boards. Trolling speed has been between 1.8 and 2.0 SOG. The occasional steelhead has been running into our lures as well.

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May 16, 2026

 

Walleye fishing remains excellent around Cleveland. We are still focusing on nearshore areas and pulling crankbaits behind our planer boards. Trolling speeds have varied from 1.7-2.1 mph. The water temp is around 56F. The mean size of the walleye we are catching has gotten a little smaller as we are starting to see more fish 16-20" being caught. Our first small midge hatch was observed Friday morning. Nothing large, but a quick cleaning of the boat was necessary before heading out Friday morning. We did catch our first Erie Dearie/worm harness fish.

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May 23, 2026

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​The summer walleye pattern is beginning to emerge and take shape. We've made the transition from crankbaits to now running mostly worm harnesses behind planer boards or drifting Erie Dearies. We are still running a couple bandits on our outside lines 100-110' back. The bandits are catching 5-10% of the walleye while the harnesses are catching the rest of the fish. We haven't yet tried running any spoons but I'd imagine they would be working. Our speed has been 1.6-2.1. The area we have been focusing on is the gold coast - crib. 30-47 FOW. This week I observed the first large hatch of midges.

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May 30, 2026

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The walleye are in full summer mode. Worm harnesses reign champion and the fish are sitting 10-25' down in the water column. This week we had big midge ​hatches and large swarms of them were showing up on the sonar. We've been fishing between the Cuyahoga, Crib, and Gold Coast at an average depth of 45'. SOG has been from 1.7-2.2 mph. Caught our first catfish this week. Limits have been the norm with walleye averaging 20".

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June 6, 2026

 

Walleye fishing is starting to hit ​its full stride this past week. Catching our limit was common and we were targeting water from 14-25 feet. The midges are just about done hatching in large numbers and we are still having great success on worm harnesses featuring colorado blades. Speed has been around 1.5-2.5. Slowing way down seemed to trigger a lot of bites. Between the four boats Saturday we pulled in over 100 walleye. Bratenahl 37-40' has also started producing a lot of fish. 

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