Fishing with Francisco, Lonny, and Ted.. 5/12/2023

Guess what....I woke up early today...(sheepish grin)...made some coffee, fed the cats, got the dogs outside, and checked the weather.

It was going to be another fantastic day to be on the water. No rain, light wind, clear to partly cloudy skies, and an air temp in the low 50s to start. It doesn't get much better than that, does it?

We launched out of Mazurik's a little before 6am and headed to the north side of Kelly's to start. Water temp on the surface was 54 degrees, but it was only 52 degrees down at 15' in the water column, according to the Fish Hawk.

We set up with white bodied Bandits behind the Off Shore boards, running 90, 80, 70, and 60 on the port side and 80, 70, 60, and 50 on the starboard side.

Speed on the GPS was 1.9-2.0 to get a lure speed of 1.6-1.7mph.

Fish came on the 70, 80, and 90 foot leads, but it was a slow bite. The early bite was best, but it slowed way down for us around 8:30, so at 9am we picked up and ran to the west side of the bass islands, to try near Niagara. We stayed east of the pack that was there, and set a course back to Greene Island. We managed to pick up three more for a total of 10 for the day. We only lost three fish today, too, so it wasn't a stellar bite for us, today.

My crew stayed positive, and enjoyed the morning. "Cisco" was making me very hungry with his talk of culinary experiments, that were successful. He built a brick oven in his backyard, for making pizzas, and showed me a picture of it. Oh, how I wish I had that in my backyard! It's amazing! He said if I could ever stay awake late enough, that he would make me one. So, I guess that means I'm never getting a pizza. ;)

They had a good time, and learned a lot. They have boats, and wanted to learn the trolling game with the inline boards. They did a great job, and I have every confidence that they can now go run boards successfully from their own boats.
They also told me, they would like to make it an annual tradition, so that makes me very happy!

Tomorrow's crew, which is a fella from MN, and his Mom and Sister, who live here in Lima, OH were notified of the NE winds, and chance of rain showers, tomorrow, and how it will cut down on the areas I can take them, to fish safely, and gave them the opportunity to back out, but they still want to go. It's Mother's Day weekend, so he told me, "I'll be fishing all month, so if we catch fish, great. If not, it's no big deal. I just want to spend time with my Mom and sister on the water". So, we'll give it a go.... we will be launching out of Catawba and seeing what we can find on the protected side of the island.

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls