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Fishing with Tina and Pat 8/17-8/19
Yesterday, I left the house at 5am, and went to gas up the boat, stop at Hi Way Bait to get ice, crawlers, and minnows for my three day trip with Tina Elly and Pat Goebel, who hail from the Fond du Lac area in Wisconsin. Then, I stopped at Big Bopper's for some breakfast, before heading over to Catawba.
I met Tina and Pat at the Catawba ramp at 6:15am, and we launched by 6:30.
Tina was talking about how they were looking at Ranger Boats for their next boat, so after getting the G2's "Auto Trim" set to go, and the daily log of information cleared and reset on the G2's little computer thingy, I stepped back, and while looking at Tim, pointed to the driver's seat.
He looked a bit confused, so I said, "This is a test ride, so you're driving". He jumped up to sit down in the driver's seat, and asked, "Where are we going?"
I pointed to the Helix, and showed him how to punch in waypoints, and set a "Go To" line for him to follow.
The lake was pretty calm, so I was waiting for him to open it up, but he kept it at a nice steady pace of 40mph. When we stopped, I showed them how the Ulterra's auto deploy worked, and Tina said, "Oh, we have to have one of those!"
Then, I switched the Helix to a split screen, so we could see if there were good marks. We moved around until we found a good number of, what looked like Perch, below us.
I explained to Pat that it's best to point the bow into the wind and have the boat completely stopped, before hitting the "Anchor" feature on the Ulterra. That way, the boat will stay right where you set it. If you hit the button while it's moving forward, the Ulterra will mark that spot, and then move around until it gets back to the spot where the "Anchor" was activated. It just saves time if the boat is completely stopped before activating it...trust me on that one. ;)
Anyway....We fished by a pack of boats between D and E can, and started catching perch immediately. Well, I should say Pat and I started catching perch immediately. Tina was mostly just feeding them for us. Pat and I appreciated her effort in keeping the fish close...lol Then, I realized that she was using a different rig than Pat and I, and I suggested that she change it to the "Skipper 9" rig, like we were using. Once she did, she started catching more fish.
When we got to their 60, I said, "Okay, let's be more selective on the last 30", so we didn't keep anything under 8 inches. Sometimes, it was hard to let a fat little 7 3/4" inches go, but we did. They weren't coming from very deep water, so they were able to get back down to the bottom. Their little air bladders were not in their mouths. If they had been, then I wouldn't have done that. Too many would die that way, and that would be a waste.
I prefer the little ones for eating anyway....jumbos are fun to catch, but I don't like eating them as much as the little ones.
I let Pat drive the boat back to the ramp, but he let me put it on the wall, so he wouldn't scratch it. After putting the boat not he trailer, we headed over to "SumpthinFishy" for Don's yummy Perch Tacos. I have been patiently waiting for a year to treat my taste buds to them again. They tasted just like I remembered them. Yum!
We took the fish to Port Clinton Fish Co. to be cleaned, and found we had 22#'s for 90 fish. Not too shabby...:)
We discussed our plans for today, and decided we would head to Huron to launch, and go after some walleye.
I picked them up at the Beach Cliff Lodge at 6am, and we headed to Huron. We were launched and headed out the river by 6:45. While Pat drove the boat in the river, I readied the trolling rods, and got all the Off Shore Boards out of the storage compartment.
We would be running crawlers to start, and then switching over to Bandits if the junk fish stole too many crawlers, and made us work to hard. That would be the case, so we took the worm harnesses off the rods, and picked some Bandits out of the box.
It was not a stellar walleye day by any means. We fished Sawmill, and another spot further out, and only caught 3 for the box, lost one, and had one throw back. There were still junk fish to tend with too, but not as bad as it was with the crawlers.
After 5 hours of walleye fishing a couple areas, we decided to see if some of the marks we were seeing were perch. We wouldn't find them until we hit a third spot closer to Cranberry Creek, in 31 foot of water. But, the black flies were biting, it was hot, and we were out of time, so 2 perch only made it into the box today.
Pat and Tina agreed to go perch fishing again tomorrow, but Pat added a qualifier of, "Quality over Quantity". So, we will go look for the bigger ones tomorrow between the islands.
Stay tuned....
Capt Juls
