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I?ve been out several times this year. I switched over to crawler harness last weekend. Last Saturday I limited east of north bass. Wind, and waves were rough, and getting worse by the time I got out. Started by the green can off of east point of middle bass. Ran to the north east stopping at the Canada line. Could only troll with the wind. As it got worse the bite slowed. 3 on the first run. 2 on the second. Last one on the last run. Mostly in 35?-40? at around 1.8 mph. They were down low, so 2oz snaps at 60?-70? back. They preferred red and chrome Colorado blades. 17?-24?

All,

Launching out of Vermilion this year.

5/12 I decided to take a buddy out for the first trip of the year.

Clearing the breakwater we headed East at a modest speed towards Lorain looking for marks. Wow, tons of marks from 13 feet to 45 feet on the Simrad.

Started trolling with Bandits at about 35 feet water depth. Quickly figured out the pattern that would get us both limits of fat 20 inch fish before noon.

They wanted those Bandits 100 back unassisted with planer boards well out from the boat, like 75 and 50 feet out after the 100. I’m thinking the sunny day and my wide 29 foot cruiser had something to do with that. Speed was 2 mph plus or minus a little with help from a large trolling bag.

Experimented with deeper and with a spoon but no dice, they wanted that specific pattern.

Favorite colors were purple back with white or yellow belly. And chrome. Blue chrome and yellow chrome.

Back at the marina, I had my first experience with a Rapala R12 electric fillet knife. I need to work a little on finesse but I will say the Rapala got thru those 12 walleye in good time.

Going back next week with a different buddy. Hope we have similar good weather. Pretty sure those post spawn males will still be hanging around.

Cheers

I’m writing this in the wee hours of the next morning, due to the forecast calling for more rain the next two days. I had to get the grass cut, vegetable garden planted, and had to run to Sandusky to pick up some more soil for a raised garden I started weeks ago, but never filled with dirt. By the time I was done, it was already my bedtime, and I was whooped. It’s not a “we killed them fast” kind of report either, so I didn’t feel the need to get it done fast, either. lol

I’ve been fishing with Dick and Brad for many years now. They are older gents who like to fish together and have their own boats, but still like to hire me for a day or two each season, as a refresher course. It’s always a good time, due to Dick’s sense of humor and his ability to keep a conversation going.

This morning, I was meeting them at Catawba, due to an ENE wind that was switching to the SE early in the morning.

My plan was to head back up to where I left off two days ago, when I was fishing with Dave and Danielle. Dick and Brad are local, so they met me at the park at 6am. The flag on the Catawba pier was lightly flapping in the mostly calm wind. That meant that the wind was already switching, so the lake was lying down.

As we headed north through the south passage, there were still some NE rollers, but they were on the smaller side. When we were passing the middle passage, the wind had picked up a little, and the waves were coming from the SE, but by the time we got to the north passage, the wind was still coming from the NE. It would eventually switch to the SE up there, too.

There were marks on the Garmin when I got to the area where I ended the last trip out, so we set up. As usual, the Ulterra is the first to be deployed, so that I can set the course and keep the boat on course, while I get everything else set up. Next, the baby Merc is warmed up, while I send the FishHawk down to 18′. Then, the baby Merc is put in gear, the iTroll adjusted, so it can achieve the speed I want, which in this case was 2.0mph to start.

Dick has better sea legs than Brad, and likes to help set lines, so he can get a refresher course on using the Off Shore boards. After I showed him how to attach them, it all came back to him, and he was off and running on setting the port side.

While he was doing that, I put the two dipsies out on the starboard side…I’ll bet you can guess the settings by now. lol Yep….zero and three settings. The zero setting was set at 27 back, and the three setting was set at 47. Both were running Yeck spoons with blue bellies.

4 Bandits ran on the port side at 80, 70, 63, and 50 back. The port side ran 3 Bandits at 77, 63, and 53 back. Colors were (3) “Green Lantern” (Slim Shady color), (3) “Buck Fever” (Domka color), a Black and a Chrome with foil sides (not sure whose that is?). The last time up there, Buck Fever was the hot color. This time, it was Green Lantern.

The early morning bite was better with the spoons, and the dipsies took the first 5 fish, so I removed two board rods from the port side and added two more dipsies on that side, and let them choose the spoon colors to use. The zero setting was set to 33, and the three setting was set to 53. They were running a little deeper than the other side. All four dipsies would catch fish at those settings.

Fish bit from 1.9-2.6mph, but mostly at 2.3mph. Water temp was 55 on the surface and one degree warmer at 18′ down. The dipsies outfished the Bandits this time.

The fish were scattered more than last time up there, so we made one pass headed west, turned around, and headed back to the islands, since the waves were only 1′ or less…we just kept the baits in the water and trolled back. The bite was not fast, but we had their limit within the first three hours, and then it got slower. Brad looked tired and was ready to head in whenever Dick was ready. Dick wanted to fish a little longer, so we gave it another half hour. I caught one of mine, and then Dick made the call to head in.

We stopped for lunch, and enjoyed some chit-chat, exchanged some pictures before heading our own ways. I will be seeing Dick again on Friday, when he and his other friend will be fishing with me again. Friday is looking really nice, after we get through two days of gusty W and NW winds, with lots of rain in the forecast.

My trip for today (Wednesday) has been rescheduled, so I’m off today and tomorrow, and will be back out Friday and probably Saturday. Saturday’s crew cancelled their reservations at the Whitecaps, because the motel said they require a 3-day cancellation notice to get a deposit back, and when he asked about the forecast, it was looking iffy. I told him that if he felt he needed to make the call that day, to just go ahead and cancel it. He said they could drive up that morning if the forecast changed. So, that’s where I’m at on Saturday.

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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I woke up at 1:30, but decided to sleep in, because I was going to take my neighbors, Dave and Danielle, out fishing this morning. I told them it would be a late start, due to the wind forecast, so I went back to sleep for another hour and a half. I woke up at 3am to a fat little pitty telling me her breakfast was an hour late, and I should feed her, “right now!” lol Alfie, the Golden, is just the opposite. I have to beg him to eat most of the time.

I got up and made her breakfast, made some coffee, and the three of us went outside. The wind was still, but iWindSurf was showing it was going to start gusting by 5am out of the north. By 10am it was going to lie down, as it switched from the north to the NE, and would be less than 5mph by 11am.
When I took the dogs for their walk, we passed by the lake, and I could see that it was white-capping. It was a good call to wait.

I told Dave and Danielle to be at my house at 9:30, so we could launch by 10am. They are my neighbors across the road from my house, and they are super nice people. We share different food recipes with each other, and Dave is a wizard with the smoker out back. Yum!
They both had birthdays within the last two weeks, so I decided to take them out for a few hours of fishing today.

We launched at 10, right on schedule. When Danielle and I were at the ramp with the boat waiting for Dave to walk back, after parking the truck and trailer, another boat with three fellas in it yelled to me, “Are you Juls?” “Yeah…that’s me”, I said, smiling. “I read your reports all the time”, one of them said. “Thanks for reading them”, I said. He added, “In fact, you said in your report yesterday that because of the wind forecast that you would be launching right now, and that’s why we’re here right now”, he said, laughing. “Was I right?” They all agreed and nodded. We wished each other good luck today, and off they went.

It was still a little bumpy as the north wind was subsiding, but it wasn’t bad at all. I pointed the Vexus north along the west side of the Bass Islands, and watched the Garmin for any fish marks as we drove. I noticed the chart speed was a little slow and was still set to a trolling speed, so I bumped it up to 10, so it would mark fish better while the boat was on plane.

Once we found the kind of numbers on the screen that made it worth a stop, we set up. I’m not going to say exactly where, because the fish move, so just use your electronics to tell you when to stop. I will say I wasn’t more than a couple of miles west of the actual islands. I drove until I ran out of fish marks and then turned the boat back around to go south.

Side note: I’m having another issue with the Ulterra that is caused by the new software update that I had to do this past week. Any time I turn the motor’s power off and turn it back on again, I have to re-pair the remote to the motor. I shouldn’t have to do that. It’s supposed to stay paired all the time. I’ll have to contact Minn-Kota again to see if that’s a known issue and if there is another software update for that.

Once the FishHawk was down to 18′, the Ulterra and baby Merc were set to a speed of 2.0mph.
The water temp on the surface was 54.7 degrees and 56.2 degrees at 18 feet down.

The dipsey rods were set out first. The usual zero and three settings. We were only over 34 feet of water and marking fish anywhere from 15 to 30 feet down, so the zero setting was set at 27 to start, and the three setting was set at 47 back.
Both were running a Yeck spoon with a blue belly that I got at Hi-Way Bait. DJ Custom Eye Lures added the blue bellies for me. I don’t know the name of the actual color of the spoon, but if you ask them, they should know the spoon I’m talking about. It’s been a productive spoon for me over the past couple of years that I have been using it.

The zero setting was eventually set to 33 back and caught a couple of fish. The three setting caught two and lost one fish, too.

Bandits ran behind the Off Shore boards…4 on the port side, and 3 on the starboard side.

Long story short…bait colors were changed out until we found the ones that were repeatedly producing. The best one was “Buck Fever” (Domka Outdoors custom color), It’s a purple back with chrome sides and belly. 63 back unassisted was the magic number, apparently, because it caught the majority of our fish. We ended up putting two more out.

Another that caught a few fish was “Green Lantern” (Slim Shady custom color) at 67 back.

It was one of those days where the starboard side was outproducing the port side for some reason, even though we had the same setups on both sides. It didn’t matter if we were going north to south or south to north…the one side just caught more fish.

By 11am, the lake was calm, so we were able to just circle around the school of fish in that area. There wasn’t anyone close to us, so it was a pleasant day. There were boats out further to the west of us, but never close enough to bother us with “Right of Way” issues.

We managed to catch our limits in about 3 hours. It wasn’t on fire, but it was steady enough to keep it fun. The fish were perfect eaters, too….mostly 18-22″ fish. We had two throwbacks and two that came unbuttoned before we saw them.

Dave and Danielle had a great time, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and caught more fish than they expected to. Danielle said, “I just like being on the lake”, and Dave said, “I would have been happy if we had only caught 4, so this is great”….and that makes me happy! 🙂

Happy Birthday, you two! I had a great time fishing with you, and I’m looking forward to your trip in June!

I’ll be back out Tuesday with a couple of my regulars, Dick and Brad. Wednesday is a trip with some new clients, and Friday is with Dick and Brad, again. The winds this week are up and down….hopefully, they stay down! This wind is making me crazy.

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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Well got a call from my son said he had the afternoon off so we went fishing about 2 miles west of the river 25 to 30 fow, banged a fish setting rods then nothing for the next 20 minutes. Wasn’t too hopefull because no marks on the sonar, then still no marks we started catching fish pretty steady and had our 2 man limit in short time. Bandits and flickers 40 to 60 back no weight, also I run 20 pound mono so they don’t run as deep. Friday we fished the same area our first pass we had 9 fish about a 1 mile troll. We had a cinco all 6 rods went off, the first rod was a sheep head but the other 5 were nice walleye. Friday we fished 20 fow bandits 22 to 25 back. Humble bee has been our best bandit this spring. We only got 2 sheep head for both days. Bigger fish on Friday with 1 28.5 and a few 26 inch fish. The rest were those skinny 21 in fish. Both days the sonar was a ghost town, Im thinking the fish were up higher and moving away from the boat. The water color was the best I’ve seen it all spring in Huron maybe 2 foot visability.

Sorry, I haven’t written all week, but I didn’t have any trips scheduled. I had one scheduled for this past Thursday, but due to a reschedule on their end, it didn’t happen. It would have been a nice day for fishing, though. They will be here next week, on Wednesday, but the forecast is calling for a big blow, so they might be doing Thursday instead. The forecast is always changing, so we’ll see what happens.

The winds were light this morning at 2am, when the dogs and I went out on the back deck, and the air was relatively warm. The sky let a star poke through here and there, so I could tell it was partly cloudy.
As the dogs nibbled on their morning treats and I sipped my hot coffee, I checked iWindSurf’s wind forecast for the upcoming morning hours. It showed that it would still be light winds until around 10am, then pick up out of the SW. It would be getting gustier as the afternoon hours approached.

The trip today was with friends, because I couldn’t spend another day on shore, and needed to find some fish. When you don’t fish for a while, you wonder what’s happening out there. Sure, there are tons of reports of “We caught them in an hour and a half”, “Fast limits”, and pictures showing full fish boards…but, no info as to what they caught them on, or a general area, to help anyone.

With that said, it was time to get out there again…
Keith and Jeremy drove in from the Perrysburg area and met me at my house, since I was on their way in. They showed up at 5:45, got in the truck, and we headed to the gas station for some ice. The boat was already topped off with gas, so that didn’t have to be done.

When we arrived at Mazurik’s, the line was short, but it was starting to get busy behind us. I readied the boat, and we hit the water. After the 400 warmed up, we went east. My last time out was on the SE side of Kelly’s, and there were a lot of fish there….I was hoping there would be more migrating through there.
The Garmin marked a handful of fish, but it was nothing like last week.

We were by the Marblehead dump when I decided that we should just get some baits in the water and head north to deeper water. We started in 40′ and went NNE until we hit 44′. The marks were few to none most of the way.

We picked off a few fish here and there, and the screen was blank when they hit.

7 Bandits were running behind the Off Shore boards, and to make a long story short….the winning bait was once again “Khaki” (stock color) running at 100 and 115 back, unassisted. One was run on each outside board, and between the two of those, they took the most fish. More Khaki Bandits replaced unproductive colors and set out at 80 and 90 back. They took fish too.

“Electric Zebra” (stock color) caught one fish. But, it was khaki that they wanted most today.

The dipsies were running at the usual zero and three settings at 40 and 57, respectively. The zero setting was changed up a few times to run deeper and shallower, but never took a fish. The three setting at 57 took two nice walleye with a Yeck spoon.

We were running at 1.9-2.5mph, and catching at all speeds. As it got windier, the speed was up and down, due to waves, boat wakes, and boat direction.

The water temp on the surface was showing 52.7 degrees, while the FishHawk showed 54.2 degrees 18 feet down.

We ended after 4 hours, going 11 for 15, which was better than I thought we would do since we weren’t marking very many fish. Our trolling pass was from the SE corner of Kelly’s up to the NE corner (S side of the shoal), and then over to the north side of Kelly’s.

There were a lot of boats working the north side of Kelly’s, and that’s where we caught most of our fish. I think we had 5 in the cooler by the time we passed through the bottom of the shoal, and moved over to the north side of “North Bay”. Then it was just a matter of playing dodge the boats. Most seemed to know the “Rules of the Road”, so there were no issues….(whch isn’t usually the case). lol

Since Keith and Jeremy have fished with me before, they knew how to do everything, so it made my job easy this morning. I just had to control the boat speed, direction, watch for other boats, play DJ, and serve sandwiches. lol

It was a fun morning, and it felt good to get back on the water again. The time off allowed me to get the boat to showroom clean again, so it was nice fishing out of a “brand new” boat again. UPDATE NOTE: The iPilot problem I had last week with the Ulterra has been fixed with a software update, so all is well again. 🙂

Tomorrow, I’ll be taking my neighbor’s Dave and Danielle out for a few hours to celebrate Dave’s birthday. It’s supposed to be a gusty North wind in the early morning hours and then fading to less than 5mph as it switches to the NE.
The plan is to launch out of Catawba around 9:30 and head up to the west side of the Bass Islands to find some fish. Fingers crossed!

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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Fished North of Kelly’s today spoon bite was great. Dipsy divers targeting 20 -25 ft down 2.4-2.6. colors Jager and chartreuse poo bear did most damage. Boated 24 in 3 hrs.

Hey. I haven’t seen many post lately. Is anybody fishing?😊 hoping to come up there fri and sat for first time this yr. Was planning on trolling out of huron. Has anybody done good there? Thanks

Couldn’t get a report out cause this doesnt work well on my phone for some reason but we had a heck of a time this past weekend!

This Weekend Warrior FINALLY boated a full boat limit! Friday me and a buddy started at Scott Point shoal after having success there in years past this time of season and hearing that some guys were doing well that way. Marked lots of fish up suspended but couldnt find many active biters. Caught maybe 1-2 there and then decided to jump over toward AE with a small pack and some head boats. Stayed there the rest of the day and picked through them until the bite picked up in the afternoon when the wind started pushing a bit. Ended up with 9 before we had to bail and go pick up my cousin at the dock. Would have punched our full tickets there IF my stupid cheap Amazon harnesses werent junk! Had an absolute TANK on that wouldnt give up an inch for about 5 minutes before he came off. Thought he spit the hook but no, the damn thing broke off the harness! That happened another 2-3x so that would have finished us off. Lesson learned, just make them my damn self like I used to!

Saturday we had my cousin aboard and slept in after a rousing night of watching hockey on KI. Tried a little further toward the north can of KI starting out but picked through sheep all morning. We made progressive moves W for each drift until we were in the heart of a small pack and Jackie/Jill and Sassy Sal doing progressive drifts. Marked fished on the bottom and started pickin through walleye. Action got HOT whenever the wind would push a bit with doubles and 1 triple! We stuck it out and finished with our 3 man limit around 430 with a bonus sammich perch each day.

Nice having good electronics (came with the new boat!) and being able to put together a program over a waypoint for this Weekend Warrior and it paid off! Appreciate all the help/guidance from Don, Coho, and some others on here.

Be back up in 2 weeks for a family Cedar Point trip but hoping to sneak out for an afternoon with the Bro in Law, we shall see if we can keep the train rollin!!

Tight lines all!

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