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Fishing with Joe and Cathy Hoppe 6/7/2020
Dexter woke me up at 2:45, which is 15 minutes before my alarm goes off...ugh.I went out on the back deck with my coffee to assess the morning's weather. According to my bathrobe, it was blowing out of the NE at a nice clip. I looked at iWindSurf's forecast and found it would be diminishing to around 10mph by launch time...whew!
Joe and Cathy Hoppe came down yesterday, from Janesville, WI, and while talking to them found out they hadn't made any reservations for lodging. "Oh no", I said. "This is a tourist town, and it's Saturday night....I hope you can find a room someplace!" I sent him phone numbers of the places my customers usually stay and they were able to acquire the last room at the Country Inn and Suites. Thank goodness!
We launched at 5:30 out of Catawba. It was closest to the place I fished last, and since Joe and Cathy are up there in years, I took my time and hopefully made it a nicer ride for them.
We set up in 24' of water and went with the waves. The Ulterra and baby ETEC worked in tandem to keep the speed around 2.0 to 2.2mph. (Sorry, I never looked at the water temp today).
I had 6 Off Shore boards out...and, running behind them were (4) Reef Runner Mag 44's and (2) Bandits. Mags were 40-50 back and the Bandits were 50 and 60 back. We caught three fish there, then came to the end of our pass, so I made the decision to move, due to the conditions and the comfort of my passengers. I thought about heading over the F can and making a pass down the line towards H can. It's been a while since I fished west of the islands though, and as I was driving over there, I decided to make a right turn and head to Lucy's via the lee side of the islands.
The ride was smoother on that side. Once we hit Sugar Island, I made another right turn through the passage between Middle Bass and North Bass and headed to Lucy's. The plan was to make a pull from Lucy's down to the monument and then the shoal again.
It wasn't a fast bite, like what was happening down south... off American Eagle Shoal, but we had a steady enough bite to keep them happy, so they were having a good time. We also had time to talk about "stuff". :)
We had our 18 nice eaters by the time we got over Scott Point Shoal. The slowest area was directly east of the monument, but further out than where I had been fishing over there this past two weeks, so they may still have been inside there...they just weren't out where we were.
The Hoppe's had a good time, and Joe will be back with his grandson, in early April, as he would like his grandson to have a chance at a "wall hanger", so I'm looking forward to that.
Tomorrow, I have the Matthew's family. We will be launching out of Mazurik's at 5:30am. The weather tomorrow is calling for east winds around 8-9mph, mostly cloudy, and a temps of 59/72 degrees. In other words...a nice day! :)
Stay tuned...
Capt Juls
