Category: Uncategorized

We fished west of Kelly’s Thursday, Friday and Saturday.Got quick 2,3 and 4 man limits.Our 54 fish weighed 116lbs at cleaners.Did some sorting when had needed fewer fish.Still not much junk and a bunch of aggressive fish around 15-17″.Ran 6 lines all 3 days.Ran 4 bandits on inlines and dipseys with J7s.Had the bandits at 80 with green/cranberry color two of the days but didn’t work on Friday.Had blue chrome bandits at 60 catching better fish Thursday and Friday.Had the two dipseys #3 @ 35-50 depending on the depth.Biggest was 26″ fish yesterday on the dipsey.Dr John had a treble bury in his hand yesterday.Told him not to put hand into net.Always use the grippers to get the fish out first then get the hook out with pliers.Two of the hooks were in and couldn’t be pushed thru.His son,a dentist also, had his emergency kit with him luckily.He numbed up his hand with lidocaine and handed John a scalpel and John cut the hooks out.He even said had no pain last night.Speed was around 2.1-2.3 mph.Was trolling Thursday parallel with another boat about 100yds away when a charter with big boards was headed toward us.Instead of headed to either side of us he decided to troll between us.I had to scramble to reel in my outside and inside boards to clear his big boards then watch his board barely clear my dipseys.I yelled and he yelled back.Didnt get the name on the boat.Must have been a rookie charter.

I have an 80# thrust Terrova for a little 16′ aluminum mod-v. It’s powered by two 100 ah lifepo4s in series to get 24 volts. I troll but I only go out if wind is under 10 knots. It seems to work fine for an hour or so but then starts shutting down. I do notice that autopilot usually keeps the motor speed on about 8, which seems excessive for such a small boat.
So I would like to know if this is normal.
What are you all running as far as thrust? What batteries do you have? How long can you troll?

My brother and I went west of the lighthouse to about 40 fow and had lines in the water around 4:15. Ran the corner rods with tru trips and stinger scorpion spoons (purple uv flash)60′ back and could hardly keep them in the water.
First 3 fish were 20″ keepers, then the shorts showed up to the party. Finally got the other rods set after 1/2 hour or so. Ran a combo of bandits, deep hit sticks, flickers off of big boards. Everything caught, but the spoons were the big producers. Limited out in little under 2 hours. Most were the typical 17″ to 22″… good eaters. Probably caught 40 shorts. Lots of fish out there, and the flies were brutal, but what a blast. Tight lines.

Fished today 5/25. Caught limit for 3 plus many throwbacks.. silver gold harness between Kelly’s and north bass island

Hoping to get out some next week

Started between middle bass, and rattlesnake. Trolling harnesses 45-55’ back with a 2oz snap in 30-34fow. 1 nice 21”, and 3 18s in about 1/2 hour. Then all shorts, so I moved up north of sugar. 2 over 20 pretty quick. I was done by 9:15. Same Program up there. Color didn’t matter. Everything got hit quickly. I started out with darker colors, and just stayed with them

I don’t even know what happened. This trip was weird. It started fine, hitting no red lights on our 3-hour drive under the light of the full moon. We arrived at Fenwick before sunrise but not so early we would need navigation lights. We got out there near B Can and soon marked fish. The new LiFePO4 batteries were powering the Minn Kota well. We got our bandits with inline planers in place without any tangles. The first hit came at around 6:30 and it was a plump 26″ walleye. Netted it well and it was in the box. We continued to find success.

Then the Minn Kota started getting loopy again. We had to keep restarting it, waiting for it to home in to GPS, waiting for it to figure out it needed more throttle to get to 2.0 mph. By then the 6 lines would be tangled and we had to pull everything in, untangle, cut line, re-tie swivels, re-deploy. And then the Minn Kota would malfunction again. I thought the LiFePO4’s would fix that problem, but no.

We gave up on the Minn Kota after an hour of tangle after tangle. Switched to manual steering the Yamaha 50 – which means tangles – and lines wrapped around the prop. One line broke, losing a bandit and a planer board which disappeared.

Yet it was pretty cool that many times, we were pulling in a tangled line by hand and there would be a fish on it.

Once, my daughter was reeling in a tangled line and it surprised us with a fish – but it also had snagged another line. But it wasn’t one of our six lines. It had snagged the line we previously broke an hour ago. And it still had the bandit on it. And a fish was on that bandit. So she reeled in two fish on two lures at one time with one pole. We netted them together.

Another time, we were all tangled around the prop. We stopped and unwrapped our line only to find another line around the prop too. Pulled it in by hand and sure enough there is another of our lost lines, and it also had a fish on it. Another lure recovered.

I could do without the constant tangles but they did keep us busy. We called it a day with two limits of walleye – half over 20″ – and 9 tasty drum, 1 cat and 1 striped bass. No shorts.

Fishing with Steve, Jeremy, and Luke…5/24/2024

Late start, and didn’t want to play, “Dodge the boats” today, so we found a spot all to ourselves, and proceeded to have some fun!
They would have been happy with 12 fish, but we managed 24….in 2 1/2 hours.

Bandits at 120, 111, and 80 back behind the Off Shore boards.
Colors that worked:
Green Lantern (Slim Shady custom)
Green Clown (stock color)
IB Infected (DJsCutom Eye Lures)
(2)Carrot Top (stock)
Blue Chrome (stock)

Stinger, Scorpion, Yeck spoons…and, a worm burner worked behind the size 1 dipsies, on settings…zero and three…30-40 on the zero setting, and 47 & 53 on the three settings.

Speed was 2.2-2.6mph on the FishHawk

They hit on the fast side and the slow side, so it was constant action for the Chapman family this morning.

Steve and Jeremy have fished with me for 13 years now, but this was Luke’s first walleye trip…his very first fish was the biggest of the morning, and he was pretty proud of that. Jeremy was over the moon happy, to see his boy fall in love with walleye fishing, and having fun! Lots of great memories were made for them, today.

Tomorrow, I have a father and his two adult sons going out with me, so I’m not even hinting where I was today, because it was really nice being alone out there, and not having to have my head on a constant swivel, for a change. Sorry!

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

Attached Images

Anyone got any intel on the casting bite across the line? Thinking of doing some slides on the west side of Pelee Saturday and Sunday.

Training video on running jets spoons body baits and worms all at the same time behind boards and dipsys.