5 Attachment(s)
Fishing with Bill Vogelzang and Doug Vryhof 6/18/2020
Got up at 2:45... made some coffee, fed the cats, and took Dexter out back to sit on the deck to drink my cup-o-joe, while checking out the weather conditions. It was a beautiful morning. The temps were in the low 70's, the wind was pretty much non-existent, and the dark morning sky had stars peeking from behind some clouds. Turning to my dog, I said, "Ahhh...I think it's going to be a good day, Dexter. I can feel it. What do you think?" Of course, he didn't reply, but he pushed into my side with his body and snuggled. I'm thinking he agreed. :)
I left the house at 4:15 and headed to the gas station to gas up the boat and grab some ice for the coolers. Then, off to Mazurik's I went, to do some re-rigging and get ready for my customers, Bill Vogelzang and Doug Vryhof, were meeting me at 5:15.
I met 4 guys there, in the get ready lane, that were at the ramp at the same time yesterday morning, and they told me they had a great day yesterday. I don't remember if I asked where they had fished, or if they just offered the info to me, but they told me where they were and what target depth they were aiming for too. They were running Tru-Trip Jets with spoons and hitting the 20' mark. (I don't remember how far back he said they were running them, but if you have the active target depth and the Precision Trolling App, you can match it with any bait.)
Like yesterday's clients, Bill and Doug showed up a little early and we were able to get on the water by 5:15.
Heading out of the break wall, I pointed the nose of the Ranger to the north, then, turned around and asked, "Everyone ready to go?" They both said, "Yes", so I pushed the throttle down and the big motor growled softly...putting us up on plane.
There were still smaller rollers coming from the ENE, so it wasn't a fast ride for us. I had to stop a mile out to adjust Bill's seat. The SmoothMove needed more air in it, because it had looked like Bill was going to be catapulted from the seat a couple of times. A couple minutes later we were back on plane and headed to the Canadian border.
Once we arrived, the Helix was confirming there were fish below us, so the Ulterra and baby ETEC were deployed and set to take us west at a speed of 2.2-2.5mph.
We started out with (4) Mag 44's ((2)blue/chrome, black/gold, and a bare naked purple perch) behind two left and two right Off Shore boards at 90 and 65 back on the port side and 100 and 57 back on the starboard side.
Dipsies were set on the 1 setting at 46 and 54 back, and the 3 setting at 65 and 75 back. Eventually, I changed out one of the 44's on the starboard side to an "Attention Deficit" Bandit and put it back at 71. It wasn't long and a nice fat walleye hit it. "Hmmm....cool", I thought, so I put another Bandit out to duplicate it.
We had caught a bunch of fish on the first pass, so I turned the boat around to head back over our route again. I don't remember what we were talking about, but at one point Doug was talking about a day when they had fished Green Bay and were struggling with their program. The program wasn't catching fish. They were fishing deep and not catching. I don't remember which one of them talked to a guide friend of theirs and he said, "You're too deep, try the top 5 feet of the water column". So, they did, and they started catching.
"Hmmm...I wonder if that would work here", I thought to myself? "Let's try that", I said. Adding, "I'll bring one of these Bandits up high". I set it to 35 back, which puts it at 10 feet. It wasn't out there very long when the board got tugged back violently. Doug and I looked at each other and laughed simultaneously at the results. We set the other Bandit out at 30 feet and the two Mags at 35 and 40 feet. After that adjustment, all of them took a fish or two.
The bigger fish came on the cranks, while the spoons played babysitter to fish from 4 inches long to 20 inches. If we didn't see anything happening with the dipsey rod tips for a 5 minute stretch, we checked them to make sure we weren't dragging an adolescent around. That kept the guys very busy this morning too.
It was a fun morning and both Bill and Doug said they had a great time, so that makes me happy. :)
Tomorrow, Jeff Rankin and his crew will be fishing with me. The weather looks like it will be nice again, but hotter and more humid. Hopefully, we can get our limit and off the lake before it gets too hot and sticky.
Stay tuned....
Captain Juls
