Fishign with Joe and Mike...5/24/2026

Joe Conley, who used to fish the same walleye tournaments that I did back in the early 2000s, reached out to book a trip with me, because he didn't want to pull his boat back here again this month. He was here last month with his own boat, and was able to get out each of the 5 days they were here, and limited each time out, too. :)

This time, Joe brought his friend, Mike, who is originally from MN, but now lives in California, because he's never been to Lake Erie, so this was his first time.

After this two-day blow we just had, with gusty NE winds, the water was going to be muddy in areas. Since there was no satellite pic to see where the dirty water is, it was just a matter of heading out, driving around, and finding clean enough water holding some fish, to fish in.

The obvious direction was to head north, since it was the shoreline that got beaten up in that wind. It wouldn't be as muddy up there, and that proved to be correct.

We started SE of Kelly Island Shoal in 36' of water, and trolled to the NE...out to 45 feet of water. There were good marks from 10-40 feet down in the water column. The kind of screen that gets a person excited, because they look like very active fish. However, that wasn't the case. It was a slow bite and a grind to just get their 12 fish.

Bandits ran behind the Off Shore boards, and the only ones that would catch would be "Buck Fever" (Domka Outdoors Custom) at 63 back, Blue Chrome at 85 back, and "The Big Kahuna" at 93 back....that's another Domka color.

The Bandits would only catch 4 fish all morning. There were also two pull-backs, but the fish came off. I tried the Bill Lewis PWC Lite with a 2oz snap weight, but it didn't do anything. I tried the Spro Madeye 120 "Ghost Purple Perch", which is usually a producer, but it didn't do anything either.

Most of the fish came on dipsies with Yeck and BadMo Arrow spoons. The "worm-burners" only got their crawlers stolen this time. The bite wasn't aggressive, so the fish would grab the crawler's tail and rip it. The last time out, they were engulfing it to the back of their throats.I removed the worm-burners and replaced them with more spoons.

The 2 zero settings were at 30 and 40, and the 2 three settings were at 57 and 82. All of them caught fish.

Speed was 2.3-2.5 on the FishHawk. Water temp on the surface was 58 degrees, and at 18 feet down it was 60 degrees.

We only ended up with their limits and none of mine, but it was still a fun morning to be out there. The weather was beautiful, the lake was pleasant, and the company was entertaining. At one point, Joe called his girlfriend to tell her, "I've never had a woman tell me what to do in a boat before"...hahahah That made me giggle.

He confessed he learned a trick or two, and that made me happy! :)

Tomorrow, I have Danny and his friend, Mike (I think his name is Mike)...they were rescheduled from last Tuesday, when it was blowing out of the NE, and we cancelled.

We'll be launching out of Catawba tomorrow.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls