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Fishing with Matt, Renee, and Papa Fred 6/12/16
The morning was blowing hard out of the north, but would lay down at noon, so I told my crew, "Since I have the day off on Monday for a doctor's appointment, we can do an afternoon trip, and head out at noon".
They met me at Mazurik's ramp at 11:30, and we waited to launch until closer to noon, as we watched the lake lay down a little more. It went from white capping waves to no white caps, but was still bumpy as we made our run up to the area above C can, near the Canadian line.
Matt said they really wanted to learn how to run the Off Shore boards, because they had just bought inline boards for their boat, but really didn't know how they work. So, my goal was to teach him and his Dad Fred all the ins and outs of running inline planers, so they could take that info and run them confidently on their boat.
We started out with the crawler harnesses, and picked up two fish in the first pass. The wind went from north to southwest, as if someone just hit a light switch, so I don't know if that affected the bite, but we didn't get another in the second pass.
After about 15 minutes of no action, I told them to check the crawlers on the starboard side of the boat. Sure enough, all of them had been attacked, but only ripped the crawlers in half. Were they walleye doing that, or whites? I don't know, but I decided to switch the baits out, back to my Bandits, so I could run faster and cover more ground.
We picked up a nice 4 pound walleye on a blue/chrome Bandit at 65 back...speed was 2.0mph. I asked Matt, "Would you like a picture?" He replied, "Yes". So I handed off the fish to him. As I reached for my camera, it wiggled and he dropped it on the floor. He picked it up, but didn't have his finger in the gill to get a good grip on it, and it wiggled again, and he dropped it on the lid of the Ranger's live well. He couldn't reach down fast enough, and it "swam" off the top of the lid and into the splash well...then, out the back of the boat.
I couldn't help, but laugh, because the whole scene was pretty comical. I felt bad that he lost the fish, but it was pretty darn funny. Oh well....that was a lucky fish, who fought hard to live another day, and succeeded. :)
We left that area and moved over to the north side of North Bass, and picked up one more walleye, and a few sheepshead. Then, with an hour and a half to go, we moved down to the west side of Gull Island Shoal, to see if those fish were still in the area, where I left them last. All we caught were a handful of shorts...and, then, ran out of time.
So, it was a successful day in that they learned how to run the inline planer boards well enough that they could do it with more confidence in their own boat. The catching was not as successful, but we all had fun, and that's all that matters.
My Tuesday trip has rescheduled for August and September, for reasons known to them. So, I'm off Monday and Tuesday, and will be back out on Wednesday with a previous customer, Andy Takos, and his friend.
Stay tuned...
Capt Juls
