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Left the house at 4:45am, hit the gas station for some ice, and headed to Mazurik’s to get things ready before my customers showed up at 6am. The wind was very light out of the north, the air temp was in the low 60s, and the sky was cloudy.

When I got to Mazurik’s, it was dark, and there were a few others already there and launching their boats. After the usual boat prep, I jumped in to dig out some crankbaits that are in the front storage compartment….those are the ones I don’t use that often. This time, I was going to try the Reef Runner Mag 44s on one side and Bandits on the other side. They’ve worked in May before, so I thought I would give them a try.

Danny and Randy showed up on time, and we launched just before it got really busy at the ramp. I hadn’t seen Danny in a year, and this year he was walking with a cane, so I told him to meet me at the courtesy dock instead of trying to climb the EZEESteps on the trailer to get into the boat. It would be much easier for him. Randy parked the truck and came down, jumped in the boat, and off we went.

I knew I wasn’t going back to where I was yesterday, and decided to head towards Starve Island area, and the east side of the Bass Islands. On our way there, the Garmin kept marking a lot of fish in 20-22′ of water, so I turned the Vexus around and went back to a starting point, and set up.

The Ulterra and baby Merc worked in unison to keep us on a course to the north at a speed of 2.5mph (FishHawk speed).

The water temp on the surface was 58.5 degrees, and at 15′ down it was 60.2 degrees.

The lake was only a little rough from all the boat wakes…not the wind. The north wind was less than 5mph at 6am. A fog threatened to come in, but never really did, so that was a relief. I hate fishing in the fog.

Danny wasn’t able to stand up, so Randy helped set lines after I showed him how to attach the Off Shore boards and set dipsies.

Two dipsies ran off each stern corner. I use a 6′ rod and an 8.6′ rod on each side. The shorter one is the “inside,” and the longer is the “outside”.

The inside run on the zero setting, and the outside run on the three settings.
The zero settings were set at 25 and 27 back. The three settings were at 35 and 37 back. Yeck and BadMo Arrow spoons were used. I didn’t even bother with the worm-burners this morning.

We had 8 in the cooler in no time at all, and then we had a major mishap happen…it was no one’s fault, but it was disastrous.

Here’s what happened….

Since Danny can’t stand very well, when a fish was on a dipsey, he would heave himself off the driver’s seat and sit on the starboard compartment, so he could reel in a fish. Well, this time, he sat on the Ulterra remote that I had set down, and the remote freaked out.

The trolling motor lost it’s paring to the remote, so I couldn’t do anything with it, and it had gone berserk….speed was at power 10…it was turned to the right…and not responding to commands to turn the prop off. By the time I was able to put the kicker motor in neutral and get up to the motor itself to turn it off, the boat had done 1 1/2 circles and had board lines under the boat, and eventually had three lines wrapped around the kicker’s prop. I was at least able to use the net to get the Off Shore board that was hanging off the end of the kicker back in the boat.

The line wasn’t budging, though, so we would have to go back to the dock to free it. I wasn’t about to go swimming at this time of year to fix it. Maybe when the water is 80 degrees, but not when it’s 58! lol

Three lines had tangled in the kicker prop, and one even found itself around the trolling motor shaft. Two Bandits were still floating out back, and when I got the boat on plane, one of them came flying into the boat. A “Buck Fever” Bandit was lost, and it is floating out there somewhere.

We made it back to the dock around 7:30, and it was busy, so we pulled up to the courtesy dock and were able to free the kicker prop of line. However, since I have the day off, I have three reels that will need to be respooled tomorrow. Too much line was removed to keep them in calibration.

We went back out, but this time we only set the dipsies, because the crankbaits did nothing in that first hour, and the spoons were catching. We only fished four lines, but were able to get our limits before we ran out of time. Whew! Nothing big…just good eaters today.

Some days aren’t perfect, but they can be interesting. 😉

Randy has his own boat, and it will be launched for the season tomorrow. He’s got a nice 1988 Tiara.

Danny will be back next week for a two-day trip with a friend who is coming in from Utah.

I’m off tomorrow, but will be back out for a two-day trip with Mick Jandl and two of his friends. They are coming down from Wisconsin. 🙂

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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After the blow! Started early this morning. Headed up east of north bass. Got the first line in at about 6:15am. Pulling harnesses near the bottom. Had 3 decent fish in the boat before 7:00 then it just shut off. Didn?t get the next fish until about 10:00. Took until noon to get my six. Plenty of marks, they just wouldn?t bite. I changed colors. Moved up, and down depth wise. They just wouldn?t bite. I?m sure it will change soon. Just wish I would have been out a little earlier!

Joe Conley, who used to fish the same walleye tournaments that I did back in the early 2000s, reached out to book a trip with me, because he didn’t want to pull his boat back here again this month. He was here last month with his own boat, and was able to get out each of the 5 days they were here, and limited each time out, too. 🙂

This time, Joe brought his friend, Mike, who is originally from MN, but now lives in California, because he’s never been to Lake Erie, so this was his first time.

After this two-day blow we just had, with gusty NE winds, the water was going to be muddy in areas. Since there was no satellite pic to see where the dirty water is, it was just a matter of heading out, driving around, and finding clean enough water holding some fish, to fish in.

The obvious direction was to head north, since it was the shoreline that got beaten up in that wind. It wouldn’t be as muddy up there, and that proved to be correct.

We started SE of Kelly Island Shoal in 36′ of water, and trolled to the NE…out to 45 feet of water. There were good marks from 10-40 feet down in the water column. The kind of screen that gets a person excited, because they look like very active fish. However, that wasn’t the case. It was a slow bite and a grind to just get their 12 fish.

Bandits ran behind the Off Shore boards, and the only ones that would catch would be “Buck Fever” (Domka Outdoors Custom) at 63 back, Blue Chrome at 85 back, and “The Big Kahuna” at 93 back….that’s another Domka color.

The Bandits would only catch 4 fish all morning. There were also two pull-backs, but the fish came off. I tried the Bill Lewis PWC Lite with a 2oz snap weight, but it didn’t do anything. I tried the Spro Madeye 120 “Ghost Purple Perch”, which is usually a producer, but it didn’t do anything either.

Most of the fish came on dipsies with Yeck and BadMo Arrow spoons. The “worm-burners” only got their crawlers stolen this time. The bite wasn’t aggressive, so the fish would grab the crawler’s tail and rip it. The last time out, they were engulfing it to the back of their throats.I removed the worm-burners and replaced them with more spoons.

The 2 zero settings were at 30 and 40, and the 2 three settings were at 57 and 82. All of them caught fish.

Speed was 2.3-2.5 on the FishHawk. Water temp on the surface was 58 degrees, and at 18 feet down it was 60 degrees.

We only ended up with their limits and none of mine, but it was still a fun morning to be out there. The weather was beautiful, the lake was pleasant, and the company was entertaining. At one point, Joe called his girlfriend to tell her, “I’ve never had a woman tell me what to do in a boat before”…hahahah That made me giggle.

He confessed he learned a trick or two, and that made me happy! 🙂

Tomorrow, I have Danny and his friend, Mike (I think his name is Mike)…they were rescheduled from last Tuesday, when it was blowing out of the NE, and we cancelled.

We’ll be launching out of Catawba tomorrow.

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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Terrible midges and slow bite. Fished the dump straight north out of Hot Waters. First the west and east. Marks were there, just not interested. Ended up with five. Had to troll because no wind.

Fish cop at the launch and said everybody coming in was light

Curious. I am coming up there from 4 hrs away to fish mon and tues. Just found out there has a bunch of wind lately and was curious if anyone had thoughts on water clarity and areas to fish. Thinking around islands or huron area. I’ve never fished huron this time of yr so curious if people do or not. Thanks

Went out of Mazurik today. Didn’t go our until early afternoon. Didn’t get skunked but came close. Water is really dirty and lots of marks
spent 4 hrs fishing and caught 1 walleye Hoping for better fishing tomorrow

Got a 26? boat. Is there a public ramp in Lorain open or even a fee launch? Looks like Hot Waters is closed

Nothing is better than that first hot cup of coffee… sitting out on the back deck in the wee hours of the morning when all is quiet, and the dogs are just sniffing for whoever walked on their grass overnight. There is the occasional animal drama beyond the fence that sends my dogs into a running frenzy, but they don’t bark at that hour for some reason…thankfully!

The weather forecast for the morning was calling for light winds out of the SSW early, then building as mid-morning approached. I was hoping to get our three-person limit before 9am and off the lake before she started blowing.

I picked up Josh and his daughter Kinley from the Whitecaps Motel at 5:30, hit the gas station for ice, and headed over to Mazurik’s to launch. We were in the water by 6am and headed to the area around Starve Island to start. With the wind direction as it was, I figured if it started blowing earlier than predicted, it would be behind us and pushing us to the NE. That would give me a lot of productive water to cover without having to pick up and run back up to a starting point.
That was just a plan, though, and it turned out to be one of those perfect mornings where plan B wasn’t needed.

The wind was less than 10mph, the lake was 1′ or less, and the fish were active.
Kinley loves to fish, and her Dad brought her to Lake Erie to do just that. They are originally from MN, but now live down near Dayton, so fishing is in the blood.
Josh had only used planer boards once before. I gave him a tutorial on how to attach the Off Shore boards, how to release the line from the front clip if a fish didn’t hit it hard enough to do it itself, and let it swing to the center before reeling it in.

Kinley caught on real quick with the dipsies, but was fine with just me and Josh setting the boards lines.

The dipsies caught the most fish this morning. I ran the usual zero and three settings on each side. The zero on the port side was at 30 back, and the three setting was sometimes at 47 and sometimes at 57 back.
The starboard side zero setting was at 40 back, and the three setting was at 61.

Each side ran a “worm-burner” spoon and a Yeck spoon. If you don’t know what a worm-burner is…is a spoon that has a 3-4 inch crawler harness attached to it, so you can run a crawler really fast without it blowing out.

The Yeck spoon is one that I have “DJ Custom Eye Lures” paint a special blue on the belly. The back has copper/red/black/and green on it. They sell it over at Hi-Way Bait…I haven’t seen it anywhere else. However, the ones hanging don’t have the blue on them,
; that’s a custom order you would need to ask them for.
That spoon has been working great for a few weeks now, so I haven’t taken it off yet.

The “Ghost Purple Perch” Spro Madeye120 caught a couple, as did “Buck Fever” (Domka custom) at 97 back. The “Fruit Dots” Bandit caught one at 75 back.
The “WalleyeX Bralwer” didn’t want to attract anyone today, so that was switched out for another “Bandit”, two different ones actually, but neither color would catch a fish, either. I tried “Khaki”, and one that Kinley picked out, which I don’t know the name of.

Speed was 2.3-2.5mph on the FishHawk. The water temp at 18′ down was 57 degrees.

We had our limits by 8:45 and headed in before the wind kicked up. It was kicking up on our ride in, so the timing was perfect.

Both of them said they had a great time and want to come back in the fall to try for some perch, and that makes me happy! They were a lot of fun to fish with, so I’m looking forward to that. Did I ever tell you that I LOVE perch fishing? lol 🙂

Tomorrow looks like I’ll be hiding on the west side of the islands, due to a NE wind forecast. Danny Harris and his friend will be meeting me at Catawba’s ramp in the morning.

I’ve already rescheduled Thursday’s trip due to the big NE blow that’s forecast. They rescheduled for June 1st.

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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