Down Range Fishing Charters

Fishing with Greg and Matt…11/4/2026

Admin 1 — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 12:43:37 +0000

Second attempt at writing this…I had it all done yesterday, but just as I was going to post it, there was a 2 hour power outage here at the house, so I lost it all. The power didn’t come back on until I was almost asleep, so I’m writing it again this morning.

Greg had contacted me two weeks ago for a trip yesterday. They needed a second boat, to Capt Jimmy Jr of “Wandering Eyes” charters. They had taken their big boat out of the water, so Jimmy was using his Ranger for the fall bite. However, they had more people than he could take, and I had been recommended to Greg.

The forecast was iffy, but I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I agreed to helping. I did however, tell them what my fishing plan would be with that gusty south wind, and that was too fish from Huron to Cedar Point….in close. Greg didn’t have a problem with that, and just wanted to get out on the water.

The plan was to meet at Huron at 6:30, now that Daylight Savings Time is in effect and the sunrise is an hour earlier than last week. I got there at 6am, and they showed up at 6:40. I would be taking Greg and Matt, and Capt Jimmy would take the others.

As we left the mouth of the Huron River, the wind hadn’t started yet. I was wondering if they got the forecast wrong, and thought about heading straight out, but something told me not to do that and stick to the plan. It was the right call, because as soon as the rain started…so did the wind. But, instead of a south wind, it was SE. That kept the waves behind us as we trolled west towards Cedar Point, so all was well.

As soon as we found the depth holding the most marks, we set up. The Ulterra and Baby Merc we set on a westerly course at a speed of 2.0-2.4mph according to the FishHawk.
Water temps were still 58.6 on the surface and 60.1 15′ down.

The dipsies went out first. I’ll keep running them as long as the spoons keep catching fish.
The zero settings were at 35 and 40 back to start, with Yeck spoons. That one I talk about that I had the bellies painted blue.
The two settings were set to 50 and 60 back.

The Off Shore boards started with Bill Lewis PWC Lites. The port side was set without the 2oz weights and the starboard side was running deeper with the 2oz weights. Unassisted were set to 7 and 10 foot down…(25 and 50 back). I had been hearing of high fish being caught they were not getting marked on the electronics, so I wanted to try it.
The deep side was set to 50/55 and 50/30 with 2oz.

A catfish was the first fish to bite, and that was on the two setting dipsey with a spoon. Then, a white bass….again on a spoon. A walleye finally bit on the blue bellied spoon on the two setting at 50 back.
The 50/55 with the Chrome Perch PWC Lite caught a walleye. The others didn’t do anything.

We had gone from the Sawmill area to the east side of Cedar Point over 30-34′ of water. The most baitfish and marks were over the 30′ of water.

The wind was picking up, so I told Greg to contact the other boat, who had gone east out of the river to ask how they were doing over there, and if they were doing okay, we would make the run over there, since it would be a little more protected… the wind was coming off that shore.

They had 8 in the box, to our 2, so we picked up and moved over there. We started just north of Cranberry Creek in 35′ of water, since there were decent marks on the Garmin. Capt Jimmy was targeting 40′ of water, so we would just parallell the shore as we headed towards deeper water.

The PWC Lites were changed out to Bandits. Blue Chrome got attention at 66 back (unassisted), so two of those would run on the port side. A DJ Custom called, “IB Infected” ran on the starboard side at 105 back (Unassisted) and caught a few fish, too. The other starboard side color was a Slim-Shady Custom called, “Whiskey and Water” and also caught at 63 back.

While the speed varied from 1.9-2.4 on the FishHawk…the best speed was 2.0 as far as when the fish would bite.

The spoon bite was also still active, so we were able to put their two-man limit in the boat before time ran out. Greg and Matt were very happy with the results for the morning and said they didn’t expect more than a few under those conditions.
I always prerfer to under-promise and over-deliver is possible, because the smiles are better than going in with high expectations and not fulfilling those expectations.

We got rained on a lot and the wind was annoying, but it was a very fun trip with these two fellas. Greg fishes a lot, but Matt hadn’t, and was smiling all morning. He seemed a bit underdressed to me, but never once complained. Their positive attitudes kept me from being miserable in those conditions also, so I thank them for that. lol

The trip with my regulars for this morning, Frank and Ray, has been cancelled due to conditions and their age. Frank brought his boat over here, so they may or may not get out if the winds behave later today. They usually come for a week and book me for one day and then fish the rest of the days out of Frank’s boat.
I’m watching the forecast, and if it improves for tomorrow, we can go. But, it doesn’t look good.

My trip for Saturday is being watched, too. The forecast is calling for gusty NW winds for Saturday. They will move to the 14th if it doesn’t change before Saturday.

Stay tuned….

Capt Juls

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Huron 11/1/26

Admin 1 — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 05:43:20 +0000

Back to the “outside” Vermillion dump today, just 6 days after our last visit. About 30 boats were in the area but they were spread out, miles in every direction.
On the way there we kept stopping to check for marks but didn’t see anything. Finally saw a few fish on the screen when we were about a mile south of the dump. So we stopped and began our day trolling north from there.
We did catch 4 between 8:00 AM and 9:30 which was great, but after that we had many long, unproductive lulls. Most of the time we just weren’t seeing any good marks. When the screen wasn’t just empty, we saw the dense fish hugging bottom, or small fish. The big suspended marks were just one here and one there. Sometimes we wouldn’t see a good walleye-looking mark for an hour.
We trolled all around that dump in every direction, and a couple miles past it on the north, east, and south sides. And made several passes.
Six days ago, our star lures were hot-n-tots, spoons, and a flicker minnow. Today those caught zero, though we gave them a lot of turns t bat and tried a lot of depths.
We were at it from dark to dark today but ended up with only 9 in the box. Biggest was 25. 1 lost at the boat. 2 dinks.
The hot lures were black-headed wonderbread bandits – regular and mini. And a ruby-throated flicker shad.
I will say that we ran into a flock of swimming seagulls a couple times and caught walleye in their midst. I also noticed when we trolled next to other boats, we were much faster than all of them. We were going about 2.6 – 3.1 mph by GPS. Seems everyone else was going maybe 1.5. We did try slowing down when we weren’t catching, but it didn’t help. All ours were caught in around 2.8? mph.

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10/27 walleye

Admin 1 — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 23:48:30 +0000

Launched out of huron. Went to vermillion dump . Started in 48′ of water. Was rough and took awhile getting out there. Ran 3 dipsies with spoons and 3 bandits. Spoons did best . 0 setting 45 bacl,2 setting 60 back, 1 setting 50 back. 2 limits by 11:00. Bite shutoff after that for us. Nice grade of fish. All 20″-24″.

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Perch fishing out of Catawba 10/26

Admin 1 — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 01:50:13 +0000

i launched at Catawba just after sunrise, and my first stop was at the green bouy. I tossed back a few small ones, and kept a few keepers when a big USCG ship, with a barge and big crane approached from the east, heading diredtly to the green bouy. After the second set of 5 quick horn blasts, 2 boats moved out of their way, and the USCG crew pulled up beside the marker, hooked up to it, and the crane hoisted it up onto the ship.

I enjoyed the front row seat (over 100 yards away), which gave this retired guy satisfaction to see a lot of work going on, while I was happily fishing. I think the stirring up of the bottom may have helped the perch fishing for a little bit, but after things slowed down for me, I moved east a ways out from the cliffs on the north side of Catawba. I caught several there, then moved up to south side of Green, where I picked through to keep my 17 for today. I kept a few smaller ones that swallowed the hook too far to survive, a lot of 8″, along with a couple of 9″. Quite a few throw-backs, but it was an enjoyable day to be out on Lake Erie.

I don’t know how long that green bouy will be gone, but wanted to let everyone know that it may not be there if you’re looking for it…

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10/25 Huron

Admin 1 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 03:44:10 +0000

We got there about 4 in the afternoon. Didn’t have to wait very long for a ramp but I could tell it had been a zoo earlier, as trailers were parked on the grass.
We headed NE from the lighthouse. Saw marks at about 43 fow and put down our 6 lines there.
2 bandits at 90 and 120 unassisted. 2 smaller cranks with 2oz weights: 40/40 to 60/60. One of the small cranks was a tan hot-n-tot I had been wanting to try. And we had a black spoon and a brown/green spoon behind tru-trips. They were anywhere from 45 to 70 feet back. All lines caught.
We only had about 2 or 3 hours of daylight to work with and it wasn’t looking very encouraging. After 90 minutes we had only caught 2 white bass.
But once the sun set, we got a few walleyes. Just nice eater size. When it was too dark to see the planer boards, we reeled up – and there were 3 more walleyes. That was fun.
So 6 eyes in under 3 hours. That’s pretty good for us.

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Sat. Oct. 24 Perch

Admin 1 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 23:59:17 +0000

Got a late start, started perch fishing east of Starve Island around 10:30am. There was a fleet there, a bigger one off the NW point of Kelleys Island, and another good size group off Lakeside. We only managed 9 or 10 yellow perch for three guys, 3 1/2 hours. One 10 inch (first fish caught), the rest were 6 and 7 inches. Tossed back 3 or 4. One boat close by was catching pretty well. Don’t know what they were doing, but it was working better than what we were doing, which was large shiners (either whole or cut in half). Mostly very light bite. Word once we got in was some limits off Lakeside. Don’t know how the NW Kelleys group did.

Might get a chance to fish one more time later this coming week, or maybe Saturday. If not, I hope to actually have a season in 2027.

If anyone knows a lot about inboard/outboard motor transom assemblies and their connection to the transom, private message me. I have an issue I’m trying to figure out, and I haven’t been able to get a clear answer.

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Fishing with Eschol and Alex…10/25/2026

Admin 1 — Sun, 25 Oct 2026 22:44:29 +0000

I woke up just before 1 am, but said to myself, “No, no, no….don’t do it. Sleep until at least 2:30, or you will be tired today”, so I went back to…

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Fishing with Keith…10/23/2026

Admin 1 — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 20:43:15 +0000

Another beautiful morning out on the back deck with the dogs. The air was still, crisp, and slightly damp. The temperature was 52 degrees at 2:30 am, and the sky was clear. I caught up on social media while the dogs tried unsuccessfully to get me to throw the ball for them.

Keith was meeting me at my house again to go walleye fishing. We were taking the Vexus again, so he didn’t have to pull his Ranger all the way over here. He’s going to list it for sale very soon, so I told him to keep it clean.

He showed up a little earlier than last time, because instead of launching at Mazruik’s, we would be driving east to launch over in Vermilion. However, as we got closer to Huron, I made the decision to launch there instead.

The fog moved in as the morning moved forward, but it was supposed to burn off around 10 am. As we idled down the river towards the lake, we could barely see 25 yards in front of us, so we made sure to stay back from the boats ahead of us. The boat directly in front of us didn’t have its navigation lights on, which is a big no-no in fog….deep sigh.

I helped keep a lookout as we left the river and headed to the NE. Most of the boats were going North, so I wanted to stay away from them in that fog. We started marking fish over 29′ water, and decided to just set up there and work our way north until the fog lifted. I didn’t want to try trolling with a pack of boats going every which way when I can’t see them, or know what direction they are going.

The Ulterra and Baby Merc were deployed, and the FishHawk was sent down, too.
Water temp was 60 degrees at 18′ down and 61 on top. Speed was set to the FishHawk at 2.0-2.5 mph.

Dipsies went out first….running Stinger, Scorpion, BadMo, and Yeck spoons.
The zero settings started out at 27 and 40 back, and the two settings were at 50-60 back. Two fish were caught on spoons in this area. It was slow, though.

Two Baby Spros were running behind two Off Shore boards on the port side. Keith put on a Pink Lemonade, and a chrome perch with a 2oz snap weight hit at 50/10 and 50/20. The perch caught one fish on the 50/10 setup.

Eventually, the fog lifted, and it was time to head out to the outside Vermilion Dump (there are two there..the inside dump and the outside dump..they can be found on most map chips and the Navionics App).

8 miles later, we were setting up again. This time the zero settings were set to 50-54 back, and the two settings were at 65 and 70 back. They took most of the last 9 fish. The perch Baby Spro got hit 4 times, but only two of those four fish made it in the boat. We ended up running two chrome perch, because the Pink Lemonade wasn’t getting any attention.

We had our limit of 12 by 11:30 and headed back in. I couldn’t stay out very long, because I have a perch trip tomorrow and another walleye trip on Sunday. The daylight hours are not conducive to my sleep and my dog’s feeding schedules. Two more weeks and we get that earlier sunrise back. Yay!

Stay tuned…

Capt Juls

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Walleye

Admin 1 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 23:42:29 +0000

Are the walleyes around yet and biting? Im not in brawl and wanting to get up there a couple times this fall. Just curious . Trying to decide when to come. Thanks for any info.

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weekend perch

Admin 1 — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:45:50 +0000

Went up this past weekend to clean and close up the boat with my cuz. weather obviously was a mess so we didnt get to fish as mush as we would have liked BUT I managed to get out sunday for a couple hours in the morning. Fished in a small pack between Lakeside and Kelleys. Good marks and lots of bites but ALL bait stealers. Caught maybe 10-12 in about an hour and a half and had about triple that in bait stealing tap tap bites. Nothing over 6″ so not worth keeping, thrown back to get bigger next year!

All done for the season unless I make it back for a charter with some friends or something so it will be river and reservoir fishing until next spring!

Thanks for all the guidance on here this season!! LOVE this forum and how helpful everyone is for a weekend warrior that between wife, house, kids, etc. only gets out about 1/5 of how much i would like lol

Good luck in the brawl and packing freezers with perch to everyone!!

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