Fishing with Jay, Jimmy, and Bob...5/26/2025

I got up at 2 AM this morning...but, I still had 7 1/2 hours of sleep, so I was feeling refreshed.

Grabbed my cup of coffee, fed the dogs, grabbed their tennis balls, and hit the back deck, to check the weather.

It was 55 degrees, clear sky, and not a breath of wind. I smiled, knowing that it would be a fun day on the lake.

Jay, had scheduled this trip for last week, but Mother Nature was having another Tizzy-Fit, and their day would be rescheduled to today.

Jay, Jimmy, and Bob would be meeting me at Mazurik's at 5:15. I made sure I was there 1/2 hour early, so I could ready things before they arrived. I like to do things in the quiet of the morning, so I don't get distracted and miss something.

They showed up right on time, and we launched. The sky was glowing to the east, but still dark to the west. We headed back up to the ENE side of Kelly's, where we would start.

I didn't want to pull crawler harnesses, slow, again, so I had swapped them out for Bandits on the port side, and a new-to-me lure...the "EBS Walleye Minnow 111", by "Livingston" (a Texas Company, I believe). It's similar to the Flicker Minnow 11s, but they dive deeper than the Flickers. Example...the Flicker at 15 feet would be 74 back. The Walleye Minnow is only 55 back. They also have a different rattle sound than the Flickers.

Both sides ran the same distances back, behind the Off Shore boards, in the beginning....120' (outside), 80', 67', and 57' (inside), but eventually the 120s became 97 feet back, and took a lot of fish.

The "Sunspot" Bandit was hot, so we changed out a couple of the others and had three of them running out there. They all produced.

The Walleye Minnow 111 colors were... "LimeLight", "Sherbert", and "Chrome xxx Shad" (ran two of those), and they all took several fish. At one point, I was ready to take them off, due to no action, but as soon as I tripped the outside board to bring in the Walleye Minnow, and change it out to a Bandit, two of the inside boards took off. Needless to say, they stayed out and caught a lot of fish from then on. I didn't keep track, but it seemed like it was a pretty even tally between them and the Bandits.

Dipsies started out with a couple of "Worm-Burners" on the starboard side, and a couple of Yeck spoons on the port side. The Yeck out produced the worms for us, so eventually, the worms were removed and more spoons put out.

The zero setting was catching at 30' back, and the 3 setting was catching at 60 back.

I have a few Yeck spoons that DJ (DJ's Custom Eye Lures) painted the bellies of them for me with a royal blue. The top side is a mix of gold/copper/red/and black.
That was a hot spoon, so we ended up with three of those out, too. The fourth one was a mostly orange one...orange belly with wide edge strips of orange, over gold, was on the top side.

Speed was 2.0-2.2 on the FishHawk. Most of the time, SOG was 3-4 tenths faster.

The water temp on the surface was 57 and down 18 feet, it was 58.7.

We made one big half circle, from east of the south end of the shoal...out to the NE side of Cedar Point, and then back towards the dumping grounds. The bite was spotty...we would get one here and one there, and then we would have doubles or triples happening.

The crew did a great job, and said they had a blast, and learned a lot, and that makes me happy! I really had a good time with these guys, too! They worked me to near exhaustion, but it was worth it! Ha!

We had our 24, and threw back around a dozen, in just over 3 hours...most of which, would have been legal, but Jimmy's kind heart said, "Let them live, to get bigger"....and, I can respect that.

I have tomorrow off, and will be back at it on Wednesday, with Dan Harris and his brother. Fingers crossed the weather doesn't stop us.

Update: I got a phone call while I was writing this, and they must have had fun, and weren't just saying that, to say it, because Jay's friend, David, just called and booked June 3rd, for himself and two of his friends. Woot! Woot! Thanks, Jay!

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls