Fishing with Danny and Charlie....5/29/2025

This morning, I had two brothers from southern Ohio, who are in their 70s. I was supposed to have them out yesterday, but when given the opportunity, they opted for today's west wind, over yesterday's east wind. It was a good decision.

I left the house a few minutes before 5 AM, and drove the mile it takes me to get to the White Caps Motel, down the road. I was early, of course, and had told them 5:15, but they saw me pull in, and were ready to go, so they hopped in the truck and off we went.

I only had to get some ice for the coolers, since the Vexus and truck were already gassed up from the previous trip, so that didn't take long. We hit Mazurik's around 5:20.

We were in the water by 5:40, and headed over to the Cedar Point Dump, to start.

The water temp at 18 feet (on the FishHawk) was 58.7 degrees, this morning.

The air temp was 55 degrees. The sky was partly cloudy to the east, with some high-hanging fog to the west, but the lake was clear of fog.
The wind was forecast for less than 10 mph, out of the west, for the early morning, and up to 11 mph later in the morning... (It hit 15mph by the time we were heading in).

There were still some residual rollers from last night's east winds, so we didn't go very fast, on our way out.

On the last trip out, I had left some good fish out in front of Cedar Point, so I wanted to start there, and troll my way up the east side of Kelly's following contours in that 42-44' range....at a speed of 2.0-2.2 mph. When we were east of the shoal, we were in 46' of water.

I ran the same program as the last time out, and they started catching again, but there were a lot more short fish, than last time. The further north we got the better the fish got. There were less shorts up that way.

Since there were only three of us this time, we ran three Off Shore boards on each side, and two dipsies on the port side, and only one dipsey on the starboard side.

"EBS Walleye Minnow 111" ran on the starboard side behind the boards, and Bandits ran on the port side. The dipsies ran with Yeck spoons. The zero setting was best at 50 and 60 back, and the three setting was best at 70.

Danny had showed up with in an old peanut butter jar, or something similar, and it had two shallow running baits in it. He couldn't remember who makes them...only that he got them at Bass Pro or Cabelas.
He said, "These are my lucky baits...we hammer fish on these all the time". I was a little skeptical, but I liked the little lip on it, and the color (black/gold/red belly), and had him pull one out. I put it on the dipsey using the three setting, because....why not? If it didn't pull a fish in 15 minutes, we could change it out again.

Well, that little bait pulled several fish this morning, and they were usually bigger fish.

Now I have to go find some to use on the dipsies in the future. I just used Google to look it up. It's a 3 1/2" "YoZuri Pins Minnow". I really liked the action behind the dipsey, so that's worth spending a few bucks on, to have in the arsenal for future trips. He said they were cheap, and I just found that Walmart carries them, so I'll check it out later. :)

The Walleye Minnows were set at 97 back (outside board), 77, and 57 back (inside board), and the Bandits ran at 97, 67, and 57 back.

Bandit colors that worked today were "Sunspot" (stock color), "Big Bad Bill" (SlimShady Custom color), "Glacier Shad" (SlimShady Custom), and another SlimShady color that I can't find on his site to look up the name...but, it's a chrome bluish-green fade color.

The Walleye Minnow colors were:
Sherbert and Limelight (2 of these)

My crew did a good job, even though it was very difficult for them to stand up, while the boat was rocking in the waves. We boxed 18 fish, but had a lot of shorts we threw back, and some fish showing up as we were clearing lines, before heading back in at 10 AM. They said they had a good time, and that makes me happy! :)

On the way back to the White Caps Motel, we stopped off at Port Clinton Fish Co, to drop off their fish, to be cleaned, so they didn't have to do it before heading south again.

Tomorrow I'm fun fishing with a friend, because it's supposed to be nice out, and I could use some fish in my freezer, now that I bought a chest freezer for my garden's bounty later this summer.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls