Fishing with the Mattlin's 7/11/14

I picked up Dave Mattlin, his daughter, Allie, and his nephew, Conner, at 5:30 this morning at their hotel. We headed to the bait shop for a fresh load of crawlers before hitting the launch at Mazurik's. We had discussed the destination for the day and we decided to go to Huron instead of Mill Point today.


Reason being, I didn't have enough time up there to figure out whether or not there were enough walleye in the area to make the trip successful. I know there were certainly enough sheephead, but I wasn't confident there were a lot of walleye there, and since he was paying for the trip, I told him what I knew and didn't know, and let him decide what he wanted to do. He just said, "I want fish". lol
Well, I knew there were fish at Huron, so that was the plan this morning.

We launched at 6am and headed east instead of north. We were the 2nd or 3rd boat in the area I wanted to fish, so we set up on a path and set lines. It wasn't long after setting lines, that we lost Conner to seasickness, and he went up to the bow to lay down for the rest of the trip.

Within the first hour there had to be 40+ boats in the same area. I kept getting cut off from the path I wanted to take, and the contour I wanted to follow, and to make it worse...the bite was SLOW. We started to pick up a walleye here and there, and had three in the box when the chatter on the radio confirmed it was a slow bite for everyone out there. We then had 5 in the box...

Eventually, I got tired of the "dodge'm game" and got out of the pack. Most of the pack was headed to deeper water, so I moved inside of them to shallower water, and had it all to ourselves. That was nice. Then, we lost Allie to the bow, because the gentle rocking from the east wind rollers were making her sleepy.

The bite picked up for us once we were out of the pack and we ended their shortened day (kids wanted to go in) with 13 walleye with a nice Fish-O for a kicker fish. That was the one Dave was looking for. :)

After we got back, I drove them to Bay's Edge Fishing Cleaning to drop off their catch, and then back to their hotel where we said our good-byes. Dave said he wanted to come back to do it again, so that's cool. I was sure they didn't have a good time, but I was wrong....they did. I'm pretty sure I won't see Conner back here again, but you never know. Maybe next time he will take some Dramamine the night before and the morning of. That would do the trick and he would have a better time catching fish instead of suffering on the bow of the boat. (I felt so bad for him, because I've been there before...ugh!)

I'm pretty sure you can guess the program, because it hasn't changed one bit. Still harnesses behind #2 Tadpoles at 60-70 back, and 1oz inlines 70 back did the trick. I had an assortment of colors out there today, with Bugsy's Baits Blades (colorados), and Larry Lambert's double willow leaf harnesses... and, every one of them caught a fish, so it's more a depth thing than a color thing, in my opinion.

Tomorrow is another trip with the Boreako family...Joe, Lisa, and Joe Jr., so we'll be launching out of Huron and hitting the same area again.

Stay tuned....

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