After a bunch of reschedules this past week, I was finally able to start the season with my Wisconsin crew of three. Jason Hendricks had fished with me a few years ago, with some friends, but this time he brought his father John and his wife Cindy along with him for a three day trip.
As you all know, the winds here have been wacky for several weeks, to where it would blow hard from one direction, and then be nice for a day, and then blow hard from the opposite direction, the next day. The full moon was last night, so typically, if the conditions are right, a good bunch of fish will spawn during the full moon, and ignore our offerings of plastic crank baits as they swim by. The jiggers will have more success with the frisky males on the reefs right now, than the trollers looking for big females.
Not all fish will spawn at the same time, however, so there will be fish that will still bite, so always go if you have the chance. 🙂
You all know my morning routine of getting gas and ice at the local station, so I’ll skip that fun part today, and get right into the what, where, and how.
We launched out of Catawba just before sunrise, so we could get the sunrise pic from the water. It’s been a long winter, and it’s my first sunrise pic out there this season, so that alone made it a good day for me. lol
We headed north to Niagara, and found some decent water. Unfortunately, my Helix’s sonar is acting up again. I just changed out the Y Cable yesterday, because it wasn’t reading on plane, and again….It wasn’t reading on plane this morning.
It eventually started working, closer to the end of our trip, though. It’s like the unit isn’t processing the info, or something, until the unit has been on for a few hours. I don’t understand it. Another reason I think it’s the unit, and not the Y cable now, is that the sonar screen’s scroll is set at 10, and intermittently it will slow way down and maybe scroll at a level 2?
Anyway….I knew the area, so we set up over 30′ of water, with Bandits behind Off Shore boards, on the south side of the reef. It was an ENE wind (early), and then began to switch to an ESE wind, with some gusts, later on.
Bandits were set at 80, 70, 60, and 50 on the port side, with the longest leads on the outside boards, and 75, 65, 55, 45 on the starboard side. After the port side caught 3 fish, to zero fish on the starboard side, we switched out the starboard side with P-10s (no weight), at 90, 70, 60, 50 (again, longest leads on the outside).
The speed on the surface was different than the speed at the Fish Hawk swimming down below. The SOG, as we trolled towards Crib Reef, said it was 1.6-1.7mph, and the Fish Hawk read 1.0mph at the lure.
Colors that caught the 5 fish this morning were…Bandits: (2) Red Headed Wonder Bread @ 40 back, RC Crush @60 back, Taco Salad @ 80 back, and one Fire Tiger P-10 @60 back.
When the waves started turning into 3’s and 4’s in the shallow reef area, we picked up and headed down inside, to Clinton Reef, and set up with a trolling pass towards the Portage River. Nada…just one pull back there. Didn’t mark much there either, which is unusual for this time of year.
Since we didn’t have time left to go anyplace else and start again, and it was windy and chilly, they opted to head in early to try again tomorrow. We will be launching out of Mazurik’s in the morning.
Stay tuned…
Capt Juls
