Fishing with Gary and Rick....6/5/2026

I left the house at 4:15am, because I had to do an island pickup for my customers, Gary and Rick, this morning. The plan was to get ice and then head over to Mazurik's to launch. Since I had to do it alone this time, I wanted to do it while it was quiet there. But, thankfully, at 4:45, three guys from Wisconsin showed up in the get-ready lanes, and one said he would be happy to dump me in when I asked.Thank you, nice man, whoever you were...I appreciated your help! :)

I sat out front until 5:10 and let the motor warm up. The air temp was 68 degrees, the wind was light out of the SW, and the sky was mostly clear. Then the sky was lightening up enough to let me see the surface of the water. I don't like to drive in the dark when stuff can be floating out there. I didn't have to meet them until 6am, so I had a lot of time to just take it slow on my way over there, so I did a whopping speed of 25mph.

It was kind of neat...being my birthday today, it felt almost spiritual, or maybe it was that fact that I was thinking of my Dad on the ride out there (he passed in 2022). It's kind of creepy driving out there in the dark, all alone, but I felt my Dad was with me, so it wasn't as scary anymore.

I arrived at Put-in-Bay at 5:30 and pulled up to the wall by "The Boardwalk" restaurant. It was easy, since no one else was parked on the wall. The guys showed up right on time, and off we went.

The plan was to head back over to where I left off yesterday, on the east-northeast side of Kelly's, about 3-4 miles off the island. We trolled over 43-45' of water on a SW to NE path, at 2.5mph on the FishHawk. At some point, we turned and went from the NE back to the SW. Then, we went from east to west, on a troll back towards the island. Fish were caught in all directions.

The program was slightly different than the past two days...

Dipsies on the zero and three settings on both back corners. The zero settings run on the inside rod (furthest back) and the three settings run on the outside rod just behind the inside rod....for newbies, that keeps the lines from tangling.
Zero is straight down, and the 1, 2, 3 settings on the back of the dipsey determine how far apart they will be from the zero setting, out to the sides.

Zero settings were 54 back on the port side, and 58 back on the starboard side. One ran a BadMo Arrow spoon, and the other ran a Yeck spoon. That Yeck with the blue belly...the one DJ paints for me is still killin it. The BadMo I most often use is silver on the underside and forest green and black on the back.

The three settings were set at 83 on the starboard side, and 72 on the port side...the port side ran a Scorpion spoon, and the starboard side had another green-and-black BadMo Arrow spoon.

Bandits ran behind the Off Shore boards, and once again "Psycho Killer" took the first fish at 80 back. The rest of the cranks (3 of them) that caught some this morning would be that one I talked about two days ago...I left a pic in the comments on that dated 6/3/26. I don't know who paints it, or what its name might be. 80, 85, and 100 back were the leads.

The dipsies caught the most fish, but the cranks caught the bigger fish this morning. We didn't catch any sheep this time, but we did get a nice, healthy kitty cat that went back. We caugt several short fish that got a kiss before being sent back to grow bigger, too.

We had our three-person limit by 10am, and after dropping them off at the island again, it was 11am by the time I loaded the boat out. I didn't have to do that alone either, there was a pontoon boat that came in the same time I did, and one of the young men offered to help when I said, "You want to make an easy 20 bucks? Just hold my boat while I go get the truck" (I didn't want to tie it off) He approached with a smile and said he would do it. :)

My guys had a great time, and Rick, who has his own boat here on Lake Erie, said he learned a lot....and that makes me happy! Gary kept us laughing all morning with his one-liners, too!

My two-day trip for tomorrow and Sunday has been moved to June 11/12, due to iffy weather tomorrow, and my customer's decision to move it to next week, so I'm off for the next 4 days. My dogs will be very happy about that.

I'll be back out Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday...

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls