A baited hook in a school of walleye provides constant excitement. At any moment, a ferocious dead-eyed lunker could strike, putting up a formidable fight against an unspooling open-faced reel. It could be hours or minutes between catches, or nothing caught at all. But one thing is certain: a day spent fishing Lake Erie is a welcome vacation from the stresses of work, business, finance, and future concerns.
A welcome vacation if you’re not a running a fishing charter business. Then the stakes of catching fish – and ensuring that customers return – are a little bit higher.
In the 1980’s 1,200 captains ran charter businesses on Lake Erie. Today that number has dropped to around 650 captains. It is still one of the largest charter industries in the country, but the industry faces threats of dwindling fish populations, environmental pressure, and a lack of interest in sport fishing from young people. The Lake Erie fishing charter industry is in decline and it would be a terrible thing to lose.
The summer of 2015 has been a particularly tough one for Captain Liles, a charter boat captain who has managed to fare well under difficult circumstances.
Affectionately called “Captain John” around the docks of Sandusky, Liles is not quite your typical charter boat captain. He has made a 40-year career of making fishing affordable. Liles hasn’t raised his prices since he started his charter business– a feat given that the $30 he charged for a day of fishing in 1976 would have the buying power of $125 today.
On a cold, windy day in October, I boarded the Clevelander II – an old red and yellow streetcar boat that can hold about 30 fishermen and women. I handed Mrs. Liles a twenty and a ten-dollar bill, about one-tenth the cost of fishing on a traditional 6-person charter boat. I hand printed my name in the captain’s log, a spiral-bound notebook that lists every person on the boat – legally required in the event we get boarded by the Coast Guard.
“We might get home late!” Liles said, jovially, as he hopped into the wheelhouse. “I had a guy yesterday nearly take my head off because we didn’t get back in time for his hot date.” The captain put the propeller into reverse and we slowly motored away from the dock. “I told him to get a new girlfriend!”
Liles wears the quintessential fisherman’s outfit – a windbreaker covering a flannel shirt and a well-worn trucker hat. When he speaks his gaze seems to extend several hundred feet into the distance, as though perpetually scanning Lake Erie’s horizon.
There were about twenty passengers on board. Two families sat in the secluded bow of the boat. Near the aft, an older gentleman next to me lit up a cigarette. He ashes the tip in the lake, but is careful to dispose of the butt in the trashcan. A couple of quiet young men in raggedy sweatshirts and blue jeans cracked the top on their first beers. Liles does not allow passengers to bring hard liquor on the boat.
An hour-and-a half cruise brought us to the western side of Kelly’s island, just a few thousand feet south of the Canadian border. Cedar Point amusement park that towers over the eastern portion of Sandusky Bay was a now just tiny speck on the horizon.
Once we stopped moving, intimidating blue-green swells splashed over the side of the boat, spraying the fishermen on the starboard side. The boat listed heavily from one side to the other. I held onto the railing in front of me to keep my balance, grateful that I had worn waterproof shoes as Lake Erie splashed onto the deck.
Though getting seasick was a real possibility, the fishing prospects were still optimistic. Walleye have glassy, opaque eyes that give them an advantage over their prey are in rough, murky waters. The term “walleye chop” refers to wavy conditions that cloud up the water column and are good for walleye fishing, though the twenty-knot winds and four-foot swells here were a little uncomfortable.
Eager to catch a walleye, I reached into an ice-cold bait bucket, threaded two hooks in through the mouth and out of the gills of still-wiggling minnows. I dropped my line about 40 feet or so to the bottom of the lake, and cranked the reel up a few times so the minnows would be suspended just above the lake bottom. The older man next to me didn’t put bother to put his line in the water – I wondered if I was doing something wrong.
At the bow of the boat Captain John tried earnestly to get the boat to take anchor in the wind and waves. Liles gave up after fifteen minutes of fighting, tinkering, reeling the anchor line up and down trying to get it to catch on the sandy bottom, a rock, anything to keep the boat from drifting into Canada. The anchor was no match for a 40-ton boat in the wind.
“I’ve never seen a day like this, ever, ever, ever,” Liles said, his frustration written on his face. He had no choice but to tell his customers to pull up their lines and head in with empty cooler – except one woman in the back corner of the boat, who landed a dinner-sized walleye as soon as she dropped a line.
Dejected, Liles went back to the wheelhouse and started the hour-and-a-half trip back to the dock. Once underway, he handed the six-handled wheel to his wife and walked back to the deck. He apologized to all of us for the wind, and scorned the forecast for predicting nice weather. Then, he did something that I’ve never heard of a captain doing – he handed every person on the boat a pass to come back and fish another day for free.
“Those guys —” he pointed to the cluster of 70 charter boats small enough to successfully anchor east of Kelley’s island, “— just want your money. I try to be as honest as I can.”
Once we got back to the dock in the calm, protected Sandusky Bay, somebody puttering around in a wooden boat yelled out, “Hey Cap’n John, how’s the fishing?”
“Worst summer I ever had!” Liles responded.
***
Captain John isn’t the only fisherman having a tough summer. Richard Unger is a lifelong charter boat operator and the President of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association. He cites environmental issues as a principal cause for the tough summer boat captains on the western portion of Lake Erie had.
In the western portion of Erie, many charter captains logged low daily catches and took in revenue well below expected this season.
“The fish are there,” Unger says. “We know the fish are there – we’re not worried about that. But, the environmental conditions, including the toxic algal blooms, have really hurt our fishery this year.”
Unger suggested that the revenue loss happened when fishermen who usually come out cancelled trips due to the reports of algae blooms.
“They weren’t going to come out on the lake – it looks like a sewer.”
Summers on Lake Erie now boast a thick mat of blue-green algae starts on the west side and spreads east across the lake, halting walleye fishing and recreational swimming. In 2014, the toxic bloom cut off Toledo’s access to tap water for a few weeks.
During this time, the water quite literally looks like what you’d expect to find in a sewer. Waves breaking on the shoreline are a sickly lime-green, and in some places the blooms make the surface water as thick as paint.
Unlike some captains whose higher prices drive higher expectations, Liles managed to keep taking people fishing through the algae bloom this season, usually able to move out far enough into the lake to avoid the algae slick. Though Liles had customers willing to fish, finding fish willing to bite was difficult.
But traditional 6-person charter boat captains have virtually no one to take fishing during the bloom. Given that the rate of a typical day charter on Erie is about $600, plus travel and lodging, it’s no surprise that few, if any, want to pay so much when the lake is topped by a layer of slime.
Scientifically speaking, this sinister mat of algae is easy to explain – large storms cause phosphorous to run off from farms into the lake. When temperatures rise, colonies of cyanobacteria bloom in spectacular swirls. But it is a difficult problem to solve, especially with so many point and non-point sources of phosphorus.
Charter boat captains have taken the issue in stride. The Lake Erie Charter Boat Association has partnered with Ohio Sea Grant to create a program where 12 voulenteer charter boat captains from Toledo to Sandusky take water samples while they are out fishing. They also take weekly surveys of water temperature, weather, wave strength, alongside GPS location. The volunteers drop off vials of Lake Erie water that are taken to Ohio State’s Stone Lab for in-depth analysis.
Unger has his customers help take water samples by holding water jugs and other survey equipment. This is a great way to spark interest in Lake Erie’s environmental issues, he says.
“They get personally involved, and they start asking all kinds of questions.”
***
While Captain Liles doesn’t test water or pursue environmental aims, he has been a tremendous force in getting people to spend time on and care about Lake Erie. For me, the coupon for one free fishing trip was cause enough to spend the extra hours out on Erie – and another $11 on a twenty-four hour fishing license from the Ohio DNR.
In 2014, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources sold over 75,000 one-day and three-day non-resident fishing licenses – a significant portion of which can be attributed to tourists coming in from out of state to the Lake Erie charter industry. All told, the state issues over 800,000 fishing licenses each year, the profits for which go to Ohio’s efforts to support and manage the state’s fisheries.[i] This includes taking surveys of the fishing industry, tagging and tracking fish populations, and coastal management efforts.
***
I went fishing with Liles for the second time about a month after the first trip. Liles’ permits allow him to fish until December 1st. For safety reasons, novice charter captains are required to stop fishing on November 1st. But, Liles’ experience allows him to fish right up until the bitter, cold end of the season.
It’s a typical day in early November – a crisp 34 degrees, with just a light breeze that should be no trouble for the Clevelander II’s anchor this time. Thousands of migrating birds line the Cedar Point breakwater extending a thousand feet beyond the amusement park. The dead-stick trees on Kelly’s island sit low on the horizon. Out past the Canadian border, a mirage of Peele Island floats just above water. Instead of heading towards them, this time we take a right and the islands fade away.
Liles finally shuts off the engine after an hour-long cruise along Erie’s southern shore. He thinks this is a promising spot to fish, but radio reports from the Sandusky captains indicate another slow day of fishing.
Slow, perhaps, but a little girl on the other side of the stern from me catches two perch at once – a “double header.’’ The silvery-white fishes flop frantically as they dangle on opposite sides of the two-pronged Alabama rig.
“Where are all the perch, John?” hollered a regular fisherman aboard the Clevelander II.
“They’re all on dinner plates in New York. For nine dollars a pound!”
White perch are among the only commercially fished species in Lake Erie on the United States’ side. In Ontario, many species are hauled in, but their numbers are closely monitored by binational efforts and research from the Lake Erie Committee of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. Most years see a commercial harvest of around 50 million pounds of fish.[ii] Wherever they are, the fish are reluctant to bite this morning.
After about an hour and only a few perch for the 30-some fishermen and women on the boat, Liles decides to make the trek back towards Kelly’s island in hopes of finding a school of white perch. This is an important financial decision for Liles: it takes a lot of fuel to move a 40-ton boat ten miles. But he does it without complaint – he’s doing his best to see a boat full of his fishermen reeling in fish.
Further out in Lake Erie, the wind blows colder and faster. On the way out to the Islands, folks on the boat eat what they packed. I’m splitting a canister of Easy Cheese and a box of crackers my father. Along with it, some beef jerky, and sandwiches from the Cardinal Grocery deli in Sandusky. It must be typical fishing food – cashier who checked us out had asked if we were going out on Erie.
“Well I’m jealous,” the cashier said as she rang up our junk food. “I used to be in a fishing group called the Walleye Mamas. We’d go out fishing once a week. Of course, most of us would be trashed by the time we came in. I quit drinking so I stopped going, but that was fun.”
Next to me in the back of the boat, two men in their mid-twenties seem to be the only ones on the boat with any luck. In-between sips of their 25 oz. Miller Lites, they reel in stripers, walleye, and several nicely sized perch. Meanwhile, the ice in my Styrofoam cooler remains undisturbed. Nothing but a few nibbles.
In the front of the boat, a little boy fishing with his family happily reels in a walleye about the size of my little finger. His dad carefully unhooks the fish and gives the boy a high-five.
“Don’t put that in your pocket!” Liles says jokingly to the kid. He tells a story about a six-year-old boy who went fishing with him in the 80’s and took a walleye home in his jacket. His mother smelled it when she was doing laundry a few days later and called John to tell him about it.
“That same kid went fishing with me a couple of weeks ago. He’s twenty-eight now. Made me feel old.”
Liles is optimistic about the upcoming fishing season – his 41st as a captain on Lake Erie. But he tells me that he doesn’t want too many more seasons out on the water. He’s looking for a protégé – someone young to come and fish with him the next couple of seasons and take over the business.
***
Tony Gabriel, a Lake Erie Fisheries Educator at Ohio Sea Grant, says finding apprentices nowadays could be an unlikely prospect. Gabriel has worked tirelessly with the charter fishing industry to keep them in the black. While fishing is still profitable, he has found that captains like Liles are retiring without any such young person to take their place.
“Guys have been getting older and there are not as many young people doing outdoor activities. It used to be that a lot of charter guys went out and they fished and when they grew up they wanted to be a charter captain. There haven’t been as many youth growing up in that industry and so we haven’t seen as many new guys getting out on the lake. Guys are aging and retiring. Frankly, they’re dying off. We’ve had a few program partners that have been around a long time that aren’t around any more.”
Dwindling right along with the captains are the walleye populations. Gabriel shares that the largest walleye hatch on record occurred in 2003.
“By 2005 [the 2003 year-class] was legal size. Any guy with a boat could go out and catch his limit back then. The fishery has kind of been living off that year class. There are little bumps here and there, but it’s generally been declining since then. It’s not at a critical low – but there definitely aren’t as many fish around as there were in 2005 or the late 80’s.”
Sport fishermen on Lake Erie harvested 1.303 million walleye last year. 25% of those came from the 2011 year-class – the most recent to become legal size for harvest. A relatively smaller portion came from the 2009 (8%) and 2007 (6%) year classes. But a whopping 22% came from the 2003 harvest[iii] – a strikingly high portion, given that those fish have been shrinking in number due to harvest and natural causes for eleven years. Though walleye certainly grow larger, and in some cases can live for nearly thirty years, the population of fish hatched in 2003 that so heavily supports the industry can only get smaller.
***
Liles takes us back to Sandusky Bay with just enough time to watch the sun set over the dead trees lining the shore. About half of Liles’ customers left without a fish, and the other half still had lots of room in their coolers. Liles apologizes for not finding any more fish, but his boat isn’t the only one. Other charter captains report their bad luck over the radio.
“It’s been like this all summer,” Liles explains. He suspects that wind in the early spring scattered the minnows – baitfish for the game species, like walleye, bass, and perch. According to Liles, the early spring weather threw off the traditional breeding and feeding patterns of the fish.
Throughout algae blooms, good hatches and bad hatches, Liles has fished through a lot during his career as a charter captain.
“It’s been good and bad,” Liles said, speaking of how the fishing has been on Lake Erie since he started his business.
Liles’ best day of fishing was thirty-five years ago. In 1980 the Clevelander II stopped above a big, ravenous school of walleye. All told, the combined catch for the day was a whopping 475 walleyes – not including the fish that were too small to keep.
His worst days have been those with exactly zero catches. Though it is rare for Liles’ boat to get completely “skunked,” it has happened several with increasing frequency in the last few years. Liles says he doesn’t like to worry about that too much.
There is a kind of faithful optimism unique to fishing. On both of the days I fished with Liles he said “we’ll get ‘em today,” and then “we’ll get ‘em next time,” when we came home empty handed. It might be superstition, a belief in the idea that if you think the fishing’s going to be bad, it will be. Or perhaps it is that every time there’s a line in the water, no matter how slow the fishing has been all day, all week, or all year, things could always turn around.
“It’ll get better.” Liles says as he ties his boat to the dock, getting it ready for the next day of fishing. His customers thank him as they step off of the boat.
“It’s all cyclical – we just had a bad cycle this year. It’ll get better.”
[i] Ohio. Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Auditor of State. OhioDNR.gov. By David Yost. Feb. 2015. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
[ii] Kayle, Kevin, Kurt Oldenburg, Chuck Murray, Jim Francis, and Jim Marckham. Long Point Bay Ecological Assessment 2007-2009 1 (2015): n. pag. Lake Erie Committee of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, Oct. 2015. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
[iii] Lake Erie Fisheries Unites. “Ohio’s Lake Erie Fisheries.” (2015): Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Web. 13 Dec. 2015. <http://wildlife.ohiodnr.gov/portals/wildlife/pdfs/fishing/LakeErieStatus.pdf>
Ryan Strother 