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Marina closed and boats in storage. Time to think about pier fishing for me. Any body heard of anything along those lines? I usually fish Sandusky’s piers and sometimes Lakeside. Usually bow hunt the weekends and fish the piers during the week. Although this week’s warm up won’t help.

Headed home to Madison this weekend to catch the Badgers and Buckeyes… I’m guessing 52-10 and hope we score 10. LOL.

Thanks.

I was thinking of trailering back up tomorrow since the wind is dying down. Don’t know what to go for. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. Most likely be 2 of us.

It is that time of year again when the big eyes are due back west, but the Brawl and slam inhibits reporting. We will try to help when we can but some guests are adamant about not wanting posts on their fish.

Capt. Christy and I got out for a few hours this afternoon to try and get back on the eyes consistently. We have been doing allot of Perching and the wind has kept us in lately.

We looked around the South passage and up around Kelleyes, Middle island, Gull and Kelleye shoals. Mainly looking for clean water. It was disappointing. We pushed further east and started getting good marks. We put out a test spread covering the water column over 42 ft. We where running mostly big fish baits but they didn’t produce. We had a nice pick on Bandits and Spros back 80 and 90 naked at 2.2 mph. Best colors were Bandit Taco Salad and Spro Gold Perch.

Water temps were in the mid 50s. Our smallest fish was 19 inches and the largest 24.

Caught 3 nice keepers all males biggest was 25″ thought for sure it was a female big old belly on it but no eggs. First time I’ve ever fished with big boards still have a lot to learn. Speed was 2.5 mph. Trolling East with the wind to my back. I believe I would have caught more than three but for some reason my rubber bands didn’t break size 16 not sure what that was about. Could have been dragging those fish for a couple hours. couldn’t quite figure out why I wasn’t catching anything there were lots of marks a commercial boat out there was tossing some pretty nice size walleye into their live well. Not sure if there was too much slack in my main line that the rubber bands were attached to. shouldn’t that line be firm and tight. Hope to have it figured out by spring. Last day tomorrow hope to get some jumbo perch I’ll let you know how that goes planning on fishing over by Marblehead lighthouse or somewhere around lakeside. If anybody does have any tips about how to make that main line tighter that would be great.

Does anybody know if the fish cleaning places are open this late in the season.

Sorry…forgot to post this here the other day….:)

Jim and Gary drove in from MN to go perch fishing. Their original date was rescheduled a couple times, due to Mother Nature not behaving, and me not wanting them to drive such a long distance, to only sit on shore while they were here. The winds decided to behave a bit for their scheduled date this time, so they made the trip out here.

The perch bite the week before was pretty darn good, so I was hopeful that it would continue, but east and northeast winds prior to their first day of fishing, made it tough for their first of two days with me.


Day one:


We started out at the Marblehead lighthouse, where I had been fishing with my previous customers for a couple of days, and did well there. We caught 6 perch in an hour and a half. We decided to take a ride up to the area around South Bass Island to see if we could find a better bite up there.


The wind was blowing out of the SW, so the area by the monument was a bit rough for them, and I moved us around to the north side of Put-n-Bay, and found some good marks near the red can by the entrance to PIB. We caught one there, which brought our total up to 7.


After moving around and trying several more spots, we moved back down to the protected side of the mainland, near East Harbor Park. Good marks, but no takers…again.


With an hour and half to go, I decided to make the run back over to our first spot at the lighthouse, where we picked up two more in the last hour. We didn’t see anyone around us bringing any in, and heard over the radio that people were struggling to catch them.


It was just one of those days, and we ended the day with only 9 in the cooler. 🙁


I told the guys we would launch out of Catawba the next morning, and try over by the cans. They were in agreement with that plan, and were looking forward to the next morning.


Day two….


I picked my crew up at Hi-Way Bait, since they were staying next door at the Peninsula Motel. I went in and bought the shiners, and ice, and we were off to Catawba to launch.


It was just getting light out when we launched and headed to G Can. We were the first ones there, so I was able to take some time to locate a school of fish, before deploying the Terrova and hitting the Spot-Lock. We ended up about 25 yards NE of the can, with some good marks showing on the Helix.


“Dollar for the first yellow?”, I asked. They both agreed, and it wasn’t long before Jim put the first one in the boat. 🙂 “That’s a good sign”, I said. And, we proceeded to start catching on a pretty steady basis for the next 2 1/2 hours. By 9:15 we had 60 in the box, and had 30 to go. But, by 10AM the bite had slowed way down, and we would only catch another 16 before it was time to head in, for a total of 76 perch.


Jim was attaching live Emeralds to his hook, by their tails, so they wiggled while they were down there, and had good bites. But, he also fed a lot of perch, because they kept stealing his minnows, since they were only hooked once through the tail. However, when he did hook up, they were a nice size fish.


I was letting them use the live shiners, while I used my frozen ones (frozen in Wintergreen Rubbing Alcohol), and was doing well with them, too. I found that the tail halves, on the bottom hook, worked best, but also caught a few with the head portions on the top hook. The piece of meat couldn’t be too big though, or it wouldn’t get touched.


They had a good time, even though the catching was less than stellar on day one, and said they would like to come back again in the spring, to try for walleye…and, that makes me happy. 🙂


My trips for the 13th and 14th have been rescheduled to the 2024 season, and my next scheduled trip is for Wednesday the 18th. But, after this strong NE blow, and rain, this weekend….I may have to cancel that one too.


A father and mother are visiting the area Monday through Wednesday, and want to take their 8 and 10 year olds perch fishing. If I think it’s too muddy inside, we will not be going. Little kids do not have the patience when it comes to a slow bite. And, if it’s muddy…the bite will probably be non-existent inside by the lighthouse or the cans. But, we’ll see what the weather does early this week, to see if it cleans up enough.


Stay tuned….


Capt Juls

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We had some guests from the area that wanted to fish for Perch. We started off Lakeside in 27 ft of water. Surface temp was 56. The water is cooling nicely.

We had a steady bite until about 10:00 when it slowed. We made one move to the lighthouse after the bite slowed. We finished early with a seasick guest with 41 perch.

The best bait was an orange fly rig tipped with small emerald chunks, followed by naked crappie rigs with frozen emeralds. Most of the perch off Lakeside were on the smaller side. The lighthouse held nicer fish. We had 2 over 13 fatties.

Our two Walleye trips for this weekend had to be rescheduled due to the winds. Hopefully we will be chasing big eyes mid week.

Perfect day on the lake, sw wind, nice one ft chop, nice emerald shinners and sonar was packed with good marks!!! Unfortunately the perch did not get the memo !! Tried from little cedar point to lighthouse and back to intake, great marks but only a handfull of dinky’s took the bait. Had some unusual marks on the sonar, clouds if what looked like mayflies appeared every so often….I know, mayflies in october ?? The perch seemed to be interested in whatever they were and not my minnows. Quite a few boats moving frequently, so guessing others were nit catching either….gotta fill tgphat freezer or its gonna be a long cold winter !!

Again today there were a couple packs. One SW of green. The other I joined S/SW of rattlesnake. I didn’t get started till 11:30, so I didn’t think it would be to good. Had my 30 by 3:00. Nice fish 9-12” for the most part. A couple shorts that swallowed hooks. About 10 throw backs that were short. No junk fish at all. They did prefer whole minnows today even though they were the frozen variety! Just a bare crappie rig. Had 3 double ups with the best being a 10” and a 12”. Honestly thought it was a sheep for a minute. Back at it tomorrow morning.

Too windy to fish or put out cameras, so went to the Toledo Zoo Sturgeon Fest on Saturday (October 07). A lot more people than I anticipated. It’s grown into a fairly big event. Good mix of people there, from couples with young children to senior citizens (I took my 90 year old father). For those who don’t know (and I’m sure most here don’t), it’s part of the Toledo Zoo’s Sturgeon reintroduction program. They raise sturgeon at a zoo facility over the spring and summer and then release the YOY (young of year) sturgeon into the Maumee River at the Sturgeon Fest (just below the zoo at the Walbridge Park boat ramp). If you want, you can “sponsor” a sturgeon (help fund the program) and if it’s either recovered or it’s transmitter is detected by a Great Lakes acoustic array, they inform you. For those who want to actually release a sturgeon, they give you a YOY sturgeon (6-8 inches long) in a small bucket, then you take it to a slide that goes into the river. You pour the water and sturgeon onto the slide and the fish slides down into the river. Great event to spend an hour at, get outdoors, and see / participate in Lake conservation efforts. If you want more information, you can start with the two web site links below the photos.

Lake Sturgeon – Toledo Zoo & Aquarium

Sturgeon Fest – Toledo Zoo & Aquarium

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