Gut pile reports coming soon too.
Be safe,
Water Dog
Started off Sunday around Starve just off the North and East edges in 22-23′, and out boat of 3 had our 18 in around 2 hours. The other 2 boats took a bit longer, but managed to get theirs as well so a full 7 man limit for the day.
Monday started in the same place, but it was a bit slow for our liking so we headed around 3/4 mile West of the NW Corner of Kellys in 28-29′ and found a good pocket of fish. Had to sort through some shorts, but again all 3 boats managed to limit before Noon.
Tuesday based on some intel from another group staying at the same motel, we switched it up and ran out of Catabwa up between D & E cans. Large group of boats but they were fairly spread out, and once again all 3 boats had a limit within around 3 hours.
Wednesday had some pretty good SW winds so back to Mazurik and headed back to Starve. Longest day of the week, we just slow picked but finished up around 2:30-3:00 continuing to move in a Southerly direction to try and manage the waves. One boat with a couple of older guys with back and/or hip problems decided to call it quits early after 2 fish, so ended up 10 short that day.
Thursday, last day, and we headed back to the Starve area. Very slow pick there, so I decided to do some searching. We found a spot NW of Kellys in 33-37′ of water and pretty much immediately started hitting doubles. Took us maybe 45 minutes to an hour for out boat, and a quick call to the other 2 got them over there and they were all finished by Noon.
Overall, another great week on the water. Other than a minor issue one day having a plug foul in my 9.9 kicker, no major issues. We’ll be back same time next year!
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.
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