Fishing with Ben, Chris, and Dennis 5/14/15

Ben and his friends met me at the house this morning at 5am and we did the morning routine of getting gas, ice, and a bite to eat before hitting Catawba for a 6:45 launch.

I didn't have much going as far as a plan, because I hadn't been on the water the previous two days, and we just had a cold front and two day blow go through. I thought I would give my last spot a try first, since it was close, and a friend had been on it the day before with good results. That spot was Starve Island area.

We set in to make an east to west pass. the guys got the lines in the water, running the same program I had running the last time I was there, (back on Monday), which was the 1oz inlines 31 & 41' back, and the number 2 Tadpoles 23-27 back with crawler harnesses....blades were copper, antifreeze, and pink underbellies, and one was a gold hammered.
The water temps had dropped two degrees since Monday, so I kept the speed slower, running at 1.0-1.2mph.


We made two passes and had three walleye, but by that time there were about 24 boats in the area, so I said to them, "Let's move further up on this next pass". As we headed east towards Kelly's, I liked the looks of the water clarity, and figured I would just keep going until the water clarity wasn't to my liking. As it turned out, I kept going until we were on the NW corner of Kelly's, and saw that the water there was still inviting. So, we set lines there and immediately began to pick up fish on the same program. Wooo Hoooo! It was game on!

We didn't get any big ones, but they were all very nice eaters in the 20-24" range. We ended the day with a 4 person limit, and were off the water by 1pm.

We did best with the 1oz inlines at 29-31' back, and after switching out two Tads for two more inlines we hit a quintuplet of fish! We only got four of them in the boat though, because while Chris was netting Dennis's fish, it did one of those flippity flop moves out of the net....D'Oh! Oh well.... :)


It was a fun day on the water and the guys all had smiles. After a nice lunch at the Moose Club we went back to my house. Ben had brought his own cleaning table with him, so he cleaned all the fish in my yard. We had a nice visit, and then they went home.

Tomorrow's 10 hour trip has been rescheduled, because they didn't want to fish in the rain, and will be fishing on May 31st instead.

Saturday's trip was also rescheduled, due to the rain forecast, because she's not a die hard angler, and preferred a nicer weekend to go. So, I'll be back out on Monday.

Then again, I might sneak out during the break in the rain tomorrow afternoon to find some perch. :)

Stay tuned....

Juls