Saturday 4/16 afternoon

I got the boat back Friday and wanted to test a few things today, but was warry of the weather. We waited until the rain stopped and wind settled a little. We left around 11:00 but did not wet lines until noonish.

Everything checked out and we headed toward the Bass Islands. The water looked good East of the islands and there were a few boats working. I didn't find the marks I like but decided to make a pass through some scattered marks. The bite started slow and we picked one here and there just like the marks. It was a loose school or individuals roaming.

We started dialing in around 30 feet off Middle Bass. What worked were Bandits 60 to 80 back, at 1.9 to 2.2 mph. Best color was Reflection, it had 8. Then Carrot Top which had 6. Gender Reveal picked up 3. The down riggers were slow with only 4 fish all day, all on Rogues, clown I think, the gold one with red head, but we had several missed releases which isn't uncommon in this cold water (too much slack on the release). We may hold off on riggers until we can tip blades with candy (night crawlers) to keep them hanging on. We will see, I hate the crawler mess.

After 4:00 the bite picked up, with doubles. We started working shallower between 20 and 30 feet. All in all the fish were solid low 20 inchers for the most part. We had one fantastic fish, she was 30 1/2 inches. I didn't have a scale on the boat but she had a huge pre-spawn belly. Looked like a barrel. She was one lucky Erie walleye as we returned her to the water as most would have hung her on the wall.

Not sure if I will fish tomorrow, if I do it won't be until afternoon. BTW it was cold out there. Water was 44, but air was in the low 30's.