Shake Down Trip in John's New Boat

John and I got out Sunday afternoon from 1-6pm.Was cold, cloudy and some wind in the morning, but by midafternoon, the sun came out and the wind died, and it got really nice on the lake. We found a pack of boats fishing some stained water south of south bass, there were good marks, but the bite was not very good. John had been talking about getting a new boat for the past 5yrs, but he bit the bullet this past fall and bought a brand new 30' Grady White Marlin 300 Walkaround Cabin. What a great boat to fish out of on Lake Erie. We are still trying to figure out some of the technical stuff on it but got the auto pilot working and nice to finally have that auto pilot when only two of us are fishing. We only ended up with 5 fish and we did not see anybody netting fish. Caught a 25 and 24 incher and two 19" fish and a 15" fish. Got two on white perch bandit at 80 and one on blue chrome at 90. The other two were with 2oz weight on inside boards. Chrome Marvin 20 then 30 more for total of 50 and humble bee at 20 and 40 more for total of 60.Speed was around 2.0mph.

Sounds like you were fishing below the active fish. Our leads were 50-55’ back with Bandits.

We were marking fish all through the water column.We were also running a lure at a 50 lead most the day but never got touched.But thanks for the tip.

It wasn’t fast and furious, but enough to keep you interested until we caught our 12.

Good job Buck eye catching your 12.What speed was catching for you Sunday?I was told by John that we would not be using a bag to slow down on the new boat.Didnt want to scratch up the new paint.So the slowest we were able to go was 1.9 mph into the wind.John has a couple of options on his auto pilot.We ran the one he knew how to run which was straight.He has another auto pilot option which is hunt mode which I think makes S turns.But he doesn't know how that works yet.We did run some manual S turns and bumped the engine out of gear a few times but did not catch anything.

Speed was 1.4-1.7. Most of the time we ran parallel with the waves, but did catch a few with the waves. Nothing running into them. No rhyme or reason if we went straight, did little turns or stalled out baits on bigger turns.

I noticed most the other boats around us trolling slower than us.But they were not netting fish so I didn't make a big deal out of trying to slow down.We actually caught one fish on a turn with the board speeding up....so go figure.