Fishing with Steve, Tom, and Heath 4/2/2022

Steve, Tom, and Heath, along with three others I don't know the names of yet, arrived from South Dakota, yesterday.It's always tough to tell your crew to drive that far, after a big blow, and an iffy forecast, but the first of their 4 day trip was going to be a gentle weather day, compared to what we have been experiencing the past week and a half, and the rest of the forecast looked like they would get 3 of their 4 days in, if we were lucky.

I explained to them what the conditions were, and that they could make the decision to drive all that way, or reschedule to another time. They chose to come and fish. This is a two boat deal, since there are 6 people in their group, so I teamed up with Capt's Matt and Jenn Wieland, of H & H Charters on this one. I had 3 people, and they had the other 3, so it worked out well.


I hadn't been out since the 21st of March, due to rescheduling three different crews, and it was time to get back on the water.


I left the house early, and headed to the boat, where she was kept warm and dry over in Wieland's heated storage building. I was meeting my crew at 7am at Mazurik's, since sunrise wasn't until 7:17 this morning, and the other 3 were meeting the Wieland's at their boat over in Marblehead. After gassing up my boat, and getting ice for the cooler, I drove to Mazruik's and got there at 6:10am.


I got to the head of the get-ready lanes, and....well...got things ready.
I sent Steve (a/k/a "Doc") a text at 6:25 letting him know that I was there, and was ready to go, when they were. They showed up 10 minutes later, and we were in the water by 6:45.


My first plan of attack, was to hit the east side of Kelly's, find clean enough water with fish in it, and set up with cranks baits. After driving around for a little while, taking note of water temps in different areas, we went back to a spot that had a water temp of 38.9 degrees, and was a little warmer than the other spots that we stopped and checked out. It wasn't too muddy, and I could see the cavitation plate too. I was feeling hopeful.


It was a slow start, and we only had 4 in the box, when I told them, "Let's pick these up and head to another area I want to try". They made speedy work of getting all the lines in, and we headed further east to find cleaner water. When we found the water clarity I like best, we found some pretty good marks there too, so we set up with a heading from the west to the east to start. The bite was much better in this second spot, and the guys were having way more fun there.


When the fish marks ran out, we made a turn and went from east to west, and continued to catch once we were over that pod of fish again. We ended up going 17 for 23 for the day, which is actually better than I thought it would be, so no one was complaining. The weather was beautiful, even though it was chilly. The sun was out most of the morning, which is something we haven't seen in days around here, so that was appreciated by all.
(EDIT: I had to change the number of fish caught, because I forgot the little keeper that was hanging on as we brought lines in to leave.lol)

We started out with P-10s on the port side and Bandits on the starboard side. The P-10's were running with 2oz snap weights at 20/20, 30/30, 35/35, and 40/40. Bandits were running unassisted at 45 to 120 back. The Bandits caught at 120, 97, 85, 77, 63, and 45 at a speed of 1.2-1.4mph.


We changed up the P-10 side to Spro Madeye 120's, but they did nothing. Then, we switched them to Reapers, and we caught one at 100 back, but eventually, I took all of them off too, and replaced them with Bandits.


Colors that caught today were: Taco Salad (best color...we had three of those out), Chrome Barbie, RC Crush, Blue Chrome, and Sunspot.


We will be off tomorrow, and back at it on Monday and Tuesday.


Stay tuned....


Capt Juls

Fantastic job cap!!!! very tough out there!

You did well, Nice job Captain. It was a nice day out there. We were due.