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I fished east point of middle bass. From the can to north bass. Mayflies have cleared. Now you can actually see the fish on the screen. Marked tons of fish. Started with harnesses, but thanks to a slow bite, and 1 particularly ornery catfish that tangled a couple lines I switched to spoons on dipseys. Caught cats sheep, and walleyes. Everything was big today. No shorts at all. Only managed 4, but all very nice 20-24” fish. Was following north of the shoal staying in 30fow average. The walleyes preferred monkey puke. Running #1 setting at 50-60’. Mostly targeting 20’ depth. Running 2.5mph. My bite shut completely off by 10:30

Is there any fish still being caught off Kelly’s island?I’m trying to figure out where a good starting point is tomorrow morning. We will be heading out of Mazurik boat ramp

Fished Thursday in a triangle between G and F can on the range and Green Island, with a crew of 3. Kept mostly out of the pack boats. Had pretty fast catch’s on the Fourth and the days before and after, so I thought we had it dialed in from last Saturday. Did not set up until about 7:45, with little to no wind, and a flat lake. Ran 6 #1 dipseys with spoons. Trolled for the first 3 hours in the same area with sometimes no strikes for 30 minutes. Around the fourth if you did not check your lines every 10 minutes, you were probably dragging under size eyes or white perch that were not big enough to trip the release. We had 6 eyes boxed after 3 hours. A friend moved out near Rattle, but the move did not change his bite. Tried changing everything up to get the bite on. So at 10:45 the bite took off and we finished our limit before Noon. Could hardly keep the 6 lines in the water, lots of shorts and white ones also, the port 3.5 setting Dipsey was just plain on fire, with a Copper back Yeck Super Muffin set at 60′-62′ back. So my question is this, did anyone fishing this area have the same bite? The marks were identical from the Fourth. It was a full moon day and had a small weather front move through the night before with rain and lighting, possibly accounting for the slow early bite. The best solunar times were listed as 10:36AM – 12:36PM, so that could have been what changed the bite or did we just stumble onto some hungry aggressive fish? Your opinion please.

PS Tried perching on 7-5 and tried a few favorite spots in 2 hours, but no perch to show for our effort.

A beautiful day on the lake!

many boats working the area today, head boats, drifters and trollers. White perch were on fire, sheep head too, but no yellow gold or walleye, some hoots and hollers from some of the boats, but not many. 22 fow moved several times but a no go for the walleye. I have not caught one yellow perch during the drifts, did catch 3 gobies.
looking for the yellow gold to return,
Water Dog,
be safe and use the life jacket

two hours today, 6 nice eater walleye
using a spreader (no bling), gold 3/4 oz erie dearie, and a golden worm harness. (one I made)
all caught walleye , the spreader caught 3 keepers!
all of the lures caught the walleye!
drift between .7 to 1 mph (nice breeze but some bounce)
my father use to call this the lake Erie chop.
head to the SE side of G can out from the Portage River , hit 18 fow then started the drift, overall 6 shorts, 1 sheep head, a big catfish, and 3 white perch (no yellow gold, yet)
3 head boats were working it and some trollers, but most were drifting. gut pile report is mayflies.

Will try to hit it soon, wife likes the walleye better than the yellow gold.

Be Safe,
Water Dog

My brother was passing through heading home to New Orleans. Got in yesterday and had to leave early this afternoon. We went out around 7:00 and headed just east of Kelleys to troll a north/south line that had been productive a few weeks ago. Fished until noon and came within a fish of a 2-person limit. I was surprised that in early July Bandits were the hot ticket for us today. 50 2 Oz plus 85 Back was the best with 125 back unassisted a close second. Ran dipsey’s on the corners with spoons. They picked up plenty of sheephead but only one walleye. Zero Setting back 40 and 55. Not sure why, but I was surprised we had continual action on a very sunny hot day with modest wind. What a great day with my brother.

I arrived at Huron at 4:30. I would be meeting my crew at 5AM. When I got there, and needed to use the bathroom, the bathrooms were shut. A sign said, “Closed for the Season”. Wait…WHAT? lol Ugh…I drove up to the gas station, but they were closed until 5:00….grrrrr.

I drove back to the ramp, and readied the boat. When Levi and Michael arrived, I asked them if they could take me up to the gas station before heading out. It was still very dark out, so we had plenty of time. They obliged me, and we were back to the boat in 5 minutes. I didn’t like leaving it there unattended, but there was no one there, unlike the previous mornings that I’ve been there…I think everyone was slow moving this morning after last night’s festivities. I wouldn’t know…I slept through all of it.

We launched, and were at the mouth of the river by 5:20. It was just light enough to read the waves as we rode out. There were still some residual rollers coming in from the NE, from overnight, so the ride out was slower than normal.

The air temp was 82 degrees. The wind was out of the south at 5mph. The forecast called for a partly cloudy sky, but there wasn’t a cloud to be seen. The sun was going to be shining on us all morning.

I pointed the Vexus towards Vermilion and set down over 36′ of water. The FishHawk went down to record the water temp and “speed at depth”, (which in my case is usually at 18-20 foot down). The temp read 78 degrees at 18′. The speed was set using the Ulterra and the baby Merc, in unison, to a speed of 2.5mph.

Once again, Bandits were running on the port side behind Off Shore boards.
I got a couple new colors from Slim Shady Customs, that I liked, so I put those on.
One is called, “Big John Here”, and that one caught a bunch of fish. I had it at both 77 back and 120 back. The other one is called, “Fire and Ice”…(you can view both new colors on his website.) That one worked at both 77 and 120 back, too.

The starboard side ran two new colors of Flicker Minnow 11s…more Slim Shady..
one is called, “Pink Salamander”, and the other is called, “Copper Confusion”. They both caught fish…but, I eventually took them off, because the Bandits were doing better. I put a couple more Bandits out, but that side just didn’t want to fire as much, this morning. Could have been a current issue, I don’t know.

Dipsies ran on the usual zero and three settings (one set, on each side of the stern)
zero settings went anywhere from 35 to 54 and anywhere in-between. I was moving them a lot, due to the pesky little White Perch chomping on everything. They were very annoying to say the least.

Someone’s going to message me asking these questions, so I’m going to answer them now. I run the size 1 dipsey with the ring. I run a shorter 6′ Med Ugly Stik rod on the “inside”, or furthest back in the rod holders. I run an 8’6″ Downrigger rod on the “Outside”, or second from the back rod holder.
The inside rod is on the zero setting, and the outside rod is set on the three setting. This allows them to stay separated, and avoids most tangles. Sometimes a hanging fish can cause a problem, but that doesn’t happen too often. 🙂

The bite was constant, if you factor in those stupid White Perch, but the walleye bite was slower. The size is getting smaller too, so I think it’s time find new water to fish. Our 18 walleye today were mostly 16-17 inches, with a handful of bigger ones in there. There were plenty of throwbacks, too.

Levi, and his 13 year old son Michael, did a great job! They said they had fun, and Levi stated he would like to come back to try for perch later in the season…and, that makes me happy! 🙂

Unfortunately, due to the economy (I’m guessing), I have nothing scheduled until the 21st. Normally, by now, I have half or more of July and August booked. But, people are hanging on to their money right now, with all the uncertainty, and I can’t blame them.

So, with that said….if anyone is looking to get out on the lake…I’m available! 😉

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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Headed north out of Huron before sunrise. Marked a lot of fish just south of the dump but they didn’t look like walleye, so we kept heading north, checking for marks as we went. Ended up stopping when we got to 45 feet of water, due north. Marks there were few and far between but we didn’t have any ideas for better spots. Only a couple other boats visible at that time. So we started there and trolled ESE, marking one every now and then. The few eyes we marked were suspended around 35 fow so we ran bandits at 120′ unassisted. Tried Flicker minnows with 2oz snap weight. Spoons with 2oz and with 4 oz. Harnesses with 2oz and 4oz. Varied speeds between about 2.0 mph speed over ground and 2.6, heading into the waves that whole time. Picked up six eyes over 4 hours. None big. Three small drum. By then we were a ways east and down to 38 fow. There were dozens of boats then where we ended up and where we started. Much better marks in that shallower water to the east. However, the wind stopped and the sun beat down and the bite complete shut down. We turned and trolled west toward the dump. Varied our offerings but nothing worked. It was miserably hot in the stagnant air and full sun. We just needed a boat ride at that point to cool down so we picked up and headed all the way over to Cedar Point dump. Still no chop. Marks were not terrible there in the east side of the dump. We caught 2 more eyes and a keeper drum. The west side of the dump was pretty barren. Turned around and headed back to the east side of it. Started to see a little chop. However, on the west-to-east pass, we didn’t mark anything and didn’t catch anything. That was all the sun we could handle so we headed back to the Huron ramp – which took a half an hour because it got pretty choppy again at that point.