Fishing with Eschol and Alex...10/25/2026

I woke up just before 1 am, but said to myself, "No, no, no....don't do it. Sleep until at least 2:30, or you will be tired today", so I went back to sleep for another hour and a half. It was the right choice, because I felt more refreshed when I woke up again than I did earlier.

The dogs were the reason I woke up at 1 am. I think they thought I had slept long enough and it would be better if I was up. I told them, "No! Go back to sleep", and they did...thankfully.

The back deck forecast was a temp of 43 degrees, a clear sky, a very bright moon, and no wind. Other than that pesky moon, it was going to be a perfect day.

I picked Eschol and his 22-year-old grandson Alex up from the Whitecaps Motel at 6:50 and hit the gas station for some ice. Then, we hit RT2 and headed east. Again, my original plan was to launch at Vermilion, but I figured if it was busy, it would be a pain, so we launched at Huron instead.

It was already packed at 7:30, but we still got a parking spot...whew! We headed back to where Keith and I did well this past Friday, which was out by the outer Vermilion dumping grounds, but stopped short of it by a few miles.

When we got over 44' of water, the marks started showing up on the Garmin, so I decided to start there and just troll north to the original spot over 48-49' of water. The Ulterra and Baby Merc were deployed. As the Baby Merc warmed up, I sent the FishHawk down. Once it was reading, the kicker was put in gear, and the iTroll engaged to reach a speed of 2.2-2.4 mph on the FishHawk.

Water temp was 60 degrees.

I started with the same dipsey program of a zero setting at 45 and 54, and a two setting of 65 and 84 back.
Scorpion, Stinger, BadMo, and Yeck spoons were attached. Colors were varied, but they all shared the same silver backs.

Two Baby Chrome Perch Spros ran behind the Off Shore boards on the port side with 2oz snap weights at 50/40...(weight on at 50 and another 40' of line let out before attaching the board..for a total of 90'). This program caught 4 of the 16 we kept. The rest were caught on spoons.

The two Off Shore boards on the starboard side started with Bandits, unassisted, but were eventually changed out to Flicker Minnow 11s with 2oz, but none of them did a thing.

Once we had their 2-person limit, we kept fishing so I could get some of mine, too. After, I caught 3 of mine, we decided to go to try and find some perch. I had brought the perch rods and some frozen shiners, and we needed to have enough time to go do that if they wanted, so I suggested we only keep 16 walleye. They agreed.

We headed over to the north side of Vermilion's break wall, over 36' of water, and marked some perchy-looking marks, so I hit the Spot-Lock, and we started fishing.

Alex caught a nice Jumbo in the first 5 minutes, but then it was just a few itty-bitties for us. We moved a short ways only once, because of time, and ended up taking just that one perch in.

This was Alex's first time catching walleye and perch, so if you're only going to catch one perch, that was the one to catch. :)

They said they had a great time, and they want to come back in the spring for another trip...and that makes me happy!

I'll be back out Wednesday for another walleye trip with Kenny Bark and his friend.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls