Fishing with Josh and His Daughter Kinley...5/19/2026

Nothing is better than that first hot cup of coffee... sitting out on the back deck in the wee hours of the morning when all is quiet, and the dogs are just sniffing for whoever walked on their grass overnight. There is the occasional animal drama beyond the fence that sends my dogs into a running frenzy, but they don't bark at that hour for some reason...thankfully!

The weather forecast for the morning was calling for light winds out of the SSW early, then building as mid-morning approached. I was hoping to get our three-person limit before 9am and off the lake before she started blowing.

I picked up Josh and his daughter Kinley from the Whitecaps Motel at 5:30, hit the gas station for ice, and headed over to Mazurik's to launch. We were in the water by 6am and headed to the area around Starve Island to start. With the wind direction as it was, I figured if it started blowing earlier than predicted, it would be behind us and pushing us to the NE. That would give me a lot of productive water to cover without having to pick up and run back up to a starting point.
That was just a plan, though, and it turned out to be one of those perfect mornings where plan B wasn't needed.

The wind was less than 10mph, the lake was 1' or less, and the fish were active.
Kinley loves to fish, and her Dad brought her to Lake Erie to do just that. They are originally from MN, but now live down near Dayton, so fishing is in the blood.
Josh had only used planer boards once before. I gave him a tutorial on how to attach the Off Shore boards, how to release the line from the front clip if a fish didn't hit it hard enough to do it itself, and let it swing to the center before reeling it in.

Kinley caught on real quick with the dipsies, but was fine with just me and Josh setting the boards lines.

The dipsies caught the most fish this morning. I ran the usual zero and three settings on each side. The zero on the port side was at 30 back, and the three setting was sometimes at 47 and sometimes at 57 back.
The starboard side zero setting was at 40 back, and the three setting was at 61.

Each side ran a "worm-burner" spoon and a Yeck spoon. If you don't know what a worm-burner is...is a spoon that has a 3-4 inch crawler harness attached to it, so you can run a crawler really fast without it blowing out.

The Yeck spoon is one that I have "DJ Custom Eye Lures" paint a special blue on the belly. The back has copper/red/black/and green on it. They sell it over at Hi-Way Bait...I haven't seen it anywhere else. However, the ones hanging don't have the blue on them,
; that's a custom order you would need to ask them for.
That spoon has been working great for a few weeks now, so I haven't taken it off yet.

The "Ghost Purple Perch" Spro Madeye120 caught a couple, as did "Buck Fever" (Domka custom) at 97 back. The "Fruit Dots" Bandit caught one at 75 back.
The "WalleyeX Bralwer" didn't want to attract anyone today, so that was switched out for another "Bandit", two different ones actually, but neither color would catch a fish, either. I tried "Khaki", and one that Kinley picked out, which I don't know the name of.

Speed was 2.3-2.5mph on the FishHawk. The water temp at 18' down was 57 degrees.

We had our limits by 8:45 and headed in before the wind kicked up. It was kicking up on our ride in, so the timing was perfect.

Both of them said they had a great time and want to come back in the fall to try for some perch, and that makes me happy! They were a lot of fun to fish with, so I'm looking forward to that. Did I ever tell you that I LOVE perch fishing? lol :)

Tomorrow looks like I'll be hiding on the west side of the islands, due to a NE wind forecast. Danny Harris and his friend will be meeting me at Catawba's ramp in the morning.

I've already rescheduled Thursday's trip due to the big NE blow that's forecast. They rescheduled for June 1st.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls