Trolling Saturday 5/15 with John

Finally got out fishing again Saturday after a month layoff.Went out with John who keeps his boat at CIC.Left the dock at 6am and motored past the busy Catawba ramp and headed north towards green.Got to view a nice sunrise as passed south bass.Set up and started a north troll.Thanks to captain Sam's posts we decided on a good original setup that we kept the same for the 3hrs we fished.We kept speed around 1.8-1.9mph and ran our bandits at 80,70,60 and 50.Colors were blu chrome,green,pooh bear purple and a Warrior color called White Perch.
Capt Sam posted that the White perch lure caught well for him last fall and I ordered 3 from Warrior lures.But the holiday mail and the Covid spike created chaos with deliveries and when they didn't show after 6wks I called warrior and they sent 3 more.Well both packages eventually showed and ended up with 6 white perch bandits.So I gave one to John,Capt Eric and Capt Keith when saw them at Crow's nest in March.So when I ran into Capt Eric Thur,he said the lure has been doing well for him so he ordered 6 more.
We also tried 2oz weights on inside boards running them initially at 20/25 and 20/20 but they did nothing.I changed up leads,colors,took weights off and only caught a 17" fish on them all day.Our outside four boards caught all our fish.Our 12 fish weight was 41lbs at cleaners.Threw back a 15" and 17" fish and only one sheephead.
After we were done at 930 motored over to put in bay to take a look.Not much activity there yet.Then showed John how to twist and loop line on those orange OR19 releases we switched to last summer.He is mostly driving when we fish and he wasn't using those boards with the orange releases when I wasn't there.He also had a board come off Thursday when he was trolling with another guy that gave him a stomach virus.Oh yeah, I was also supposed to fish with John Friday morning.I woke up early and was getting ready when he texted me he was sick and he couldn't make it fishing.Sat around our Lake house Friday looking out at the boats out there fishing all day.Luckily he was well enough Saturday to fish.What a great fishery we have.Those fish are still great size fish.