#15- Ohio and their Walleye Obsession

Ohio started out rough. They have no official state fish, but the unofficial state fish and clearly the most popular one is the walleye. Limited to the shore, we fished piers along Lake Erie around Toledo late into the night for several days with no luck, and not much indication that we were doing the right thing. Cold, wet and empty handed.

After a few days, we went on ABC 13 with Lissa Guyton out of Toledo, and that helped us tremendously. Hunter Hayes, a local fisherman and fly fishing guide from Toledo fished with us for two long nights in the rain, and even got a friend to take us out on his boat for a short while, although the weather that night was not agreeable and made fishing from shore the best option. This was our first indication of just how hospitable people in the mid-west were going to be towards us.

Even with this help, we still were coming up empty, until Daniel Baum offered to take us out on his boat. Daniel lives and breaths fishing, especially walleye fishing. We trolled for walleyes for a few hours, and although it was a slow night we caught six total and two good sized keepers. We cleaned and filleted them and cooked them up at Walmart in the early hours of the morning after our long fishing trip.

We’re so grateful for Daniel, we could not have done it without his help. The next morning we drove up towards Michigan.