One of my regular customers had to cancel his trip yesterday, due to personal uncontrollable circumstances on his end, so I was going to tag along and fun fish with my friend Scott Bogen who was in town prefishing for the NWT out of the Detroit River this coming weekend. Another friend, John, would also be fishing with us.
We hit the water at 7:30, and trolled a couple areas in the morning, and had 13 walleye by 10:30 when I received a phone call from a MN area code.
Two brothers and their friend (all originally from Wisconsin with one still living there), were in Ohio for the week for some fishing fun and their boat broke down after the first night here. They were looking for a charter to get them out on the water. Being a Wisco gal myself, I felt obligated to help them out.
But, what could I do? My boat was attached to my truck and sitting in the driveway at home, and I was sitting out in the middle of Lake Erie.
I didn't tell them, "No" though, and asked them if they would be willing to stop and pick up my truck and boat and drive it over to the launch that was closest to where we were fishing at the time, and they said, "Yes". After some instruction, about a 1/2 hour later they said they had picked up the boat and were on their way to the launch. Scotty drove me in and dropped me off, and about 2 minutes later they pulled in. It was perfect timing, and I thought everything was going to go smoothly and we would be on the water fishing in just a few minutes.. I was wrong.
As I readied the boat at the launch, I plugged the trolling motor in and remembered that I had taken the remote for the trolling motor out of the glove box and put it on my desk for safe keeping since the next trip wasn't for a few more days. Ugh!! I explained that we couldn't go anywhere without that remote, and I would have to drive back home and get it. They were very understanding and the brothers, Brian and Aaron, said they would hang out at the launch and eat their Subway sandwiches they bought on the way to the ramp, and Jason would go for a ride with me.
We picked up the remote and headed back to the ramp. We launched at 11:45am and headed out to the last spot I was with with Scotty. Since he's fishing a tournament, I am not giving out his spot information, but I can say, for anyone that knows this lake, it's pretty common for this time of year, and no secret.
After picking up a few fish there, we headed towards the west side of Green Island where I had taken the previous day's crew, and set out trolling DHJ12's 35-60 back. The previous day they jumped all over the Pink Lemonad and Blue Glass colors, but yesterday they wanted the Glass Clown. That color took most of the fish over there.
I had switched out a Blue Glass for a Halloween, and told the guys, "Okay, I always like to make it a little interesting and have you each pick a bait/board that you think is going to catch a fish next". Jason picked the middle board on the Port Side, and Brian picked the middle board on the starboard side. We waited for Aaron to pick one, and he finally pointed to the board that had the new Halloween color on it and it wasn't two seconds later that that board went shooting back with a the biggest fish of the day on it! We all laughed and hooped and hollered while he reeled it in. It was 30 inches long, but I don't have a scaled in the boat to get any weights, so we guess it to be close to 10 pounds. She had a big head and some big shoulders on her, but her belly is still pretty skinny after the spawn.
They are just starting to put the feed bag on and it will be a good week before we see those bellies getting full and tight again.
We ended up with 9 fish between 25 and 30 inches for the day. The bite seemed better in the morning than it was in the afternoon yesterday.
We met Scotty and John at the mexican restaurant for dinner and headed home to drop the crew off with their fish, and put the boat to bed. I was whooped and didn't get this blog done until this morning.
The same crew wants to go this morning, so I have to make this short!
We'll be launching out of Mazurik's at 8am. I'll report back later!
Capt. Juls
