View Full Version : Eelpout fishing
Can anyone give me any information about how to catch "lawyers"
as we call them down here in Lake Erie. There numbers have been increasing in recent years and I would like to try fishing for them. I've never fished for them so any info would help. They usually come in near shore around the middle of November and they catch them until the rivers ice up. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
they will be attracted to the typical flashy type spoons commonly used for walleyes. pinch a minnow in two and use either half. the eelpout aren't chasers however, and will hit the bait that stands still for a few minutes, very close, but not on the bottem. or...just a hook and live minnow on a bobber/set line very close to the bottem. good eatin' fish, fixed same as a wallyeye. the meat is along either side of the backbone from the head to the start of the tail fin...not much on the tail itself.
THE BAIT SHOP GUY
10-19-2001, 01:26 PM
I've never fished them in open water but get we get a lot of them through the ice. The two best tips I could give you are fish after dark and use baits that glow. The largest Northland Buckshot spoons tipped with a minnow head work great. The orange and the green ones both glow. Charge them with a camera flash. The brighter the glow the better. I would think a glow leadhead tipped with a large minnow would work fine. Don't let their strange looks fool you, they are excellent eating. Fillet the tail section from the back of the body cavity to the base of the tail. Next, flip the fish on to it's belly and take out the section of meat above the ribs. It lays in there like the backstrap on a deer. Cook them any way you want. Good deep fried, but they make the best poor mans lobster you ever had!
CHRIS WAHL - http://www.baydenoc.com/bayviewsports
Pitts
10-22-2001, 07:30 AM
I second the use of glow lures.
get the light stick that attaches to your lure in green. A budy of mine was fishing with 4 of us on Red Lake and that's what he had anwe had normal glows that we light up with a spot. He caught 5 pout and we caught 30 crappie. He caught no crappie and we caught no pout it was all in the lighted lure.
Pitts