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Fishing with Rodney, Jim, and Patrick 5/7-5/9/16
I only had time this week to summarize the three day trip into this one blog, due to yard work that needed to get done before more rain comes this week. I had to cut my grass in sections, due to water saturation from the last rains we had. But, the good news is, it's finally all the same length. :)
So, with that said...
Each morning, I picked up my crew from their hotel, and we went to Bopper's for breakfast before heading to a launch. The first morning we launched at Mazurik's, because it was a nice Saturday, and I figured that Catawba would be jam packed with weekend anglers wanting to launch. No one was at Mazurik's, so we were on the water in quick fashion.
We made a pass at Starve, where I was fishing the day before with the last crew, and we caught a few white bass and one walleye there, before heading over to the D Can area.
We ran Bandits on one side and the new Smithwick Top-20's on the other side. And, even though there isn't a dive curve published for the T-20's yet, we ran them at 55 to 100 back, and if they produced a fish, we simply duplicated the amount of line out, on the rod that it was caught on. They actually outproduced the Bandits on the first day of their trip.
After getting 5 more fish at D Can, we made a run up to the North Side of North Bass, to give that a shot. That area produced 4 more nice fish, but it was definitely a "spot on the spot" situation, because we only caught them on that spot. lol
After we left North Bass, we went through the middle passage and over to Kelly's to check that area out on the way back to the launch. The water was pretty clean, and we didn't catch anything with cranks in the one NE to SW pull that we did, in 32' of water. We didn't have time to look around the area very thorough though, so we didn't think we would be back the next day in that area.
Ended the day with 10 walleye.
Day two we launched out of Catawba and hit the area between Green and South Bass. It was showing a lot of marks on the Helix, so we set up to make a pass...again, with the Bandits and Top-20's. (I know...I know...I shouldn't even tell you that, since no one can get them yet...so unfair!! Eh? :)
Anyway, we stuck to that area, and the area over between the west side of Mouse Island and the point at Catawba. At one point, we had the point all to ourselves, while the area at Green was contested with boats and anglers. We were picking slowly at the fish, but they were often enough to keep us all entertained.
My crew got adept enough at running Off Shore boards that we put a 4th one out on each side, for a total of 8 boards out. We had some tangles, but nothing very bad, so it all went very well.
Only 10 walleye caught on day 2 too.
Today we launched at Catawba again. We set up for running crawler harnesses, and hit west of Mouse first. Still lots of marks in there, but they didn't want anything to do with meat this morning...so strange. It's got me scratching my head.
As soon as we switched back over to Bandits we caught three fish in quick fashion. We moved over to make a pass at Green, but about 3/4 of the way through that pass, we picked up and headed out to Niagra to see what was going on out there.
There wasn't much, apparently, because the marks were fewer and we only caught one small fish out there. We headed back to the islands, and hit Middle Bass next. It's typically good for a fish or two, but nothing came in that pass either. We only had an hour left, so I just keep the baits in the water and headed from Middle Bass down towards Green. We marked a lot of fish in that pass, but only picked up one more before heading in.
We ended the day with 6 fish today.
Not sure I'm going to be able to get on the water tomorrow with the wind forecast calling for steady winds of 15-22, and gusts up to 28mph, so I'll be looking at the forecast again in the morning, and letting my new crew know what the decision is then.
So Stay tuned....
Capt Juls
