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Fishing with Dave and Joey Buttram 5/30/15
A couple days ago, I wasn't sure if today's trip was going to happen, because the forecast was calling for storms. When I got up at 3am this morning, the forecast was looking good for getting our day in. The storms weren't going to happen until later this evening. Whew!
As I right this, the skies are darkening, and the temperatures are falling. I can finally turn the air conditioners off and open the windows again. It's always nice to get fresh air in the house, isn't it?
At 5am I headed over to the Quality Inn to pick up my crew. As usual, I was a little early, but had texted them when I was on my way to let them know I was going to be a little early. They came down and we loaded up. I had to hit Hi Way Bait first for some ice, and some big fat crawlers, before heading over to Huron to launch.
We got to Huron just before 6am and were headed out of the channel. We headed west out of the channel and set lines in 25' of water. As Joey was setting the second board out the first one went back with a hard pull. He handed the rod to his Dad, and we had a nice 6 pound fish in the box. I thought it was going to be one of those gang buster mornings again, but it would be a while before we would hook up with another walleye. We went through several sheephead and whites, before getting another walleye. There were 6 in the box when I decided to move further west on the good word that there were more fish that way right now. We just had to find some good marks and start fishing.
Hey, guess what program we were using... Yes! You guessed it! Same thing as usual.
We only ran two rods per side, even though we could run three, because sometimes it's just more productive to run fewer lines when there are folks on board who have never used inline planer boards before. The good news is, they learned quickly and now that they know how they work, and have some confidence in running them, they will be buying some Off Shore boards to use back home on their own waters. ;)
Crawlers behind 1oz inline or Guppy weights, 31 and 41 back, with hammered copper or antifreeze, on the undersides of the #6 Colorado blades was the ticket for us today. We also took two nice fish on a 4oz bottom bouncer off the back corner. I only ran one, so we could change it from side to side as fish hit boards on either side of the boat.
It was a fun morning. The winds weren't bad and there was just a nice chop on the lake. We headed in after they got their 12th fish, because the radar was showing a pop up storm to the SW, and it looked like it was moving towards us, so they had no issues with coming in a little bit early. (We only had 20 more minutes to fish anyway).
I dropped them and their fish off and wished them safe travels. They said they would like to rebook either for a trip this fall or in the spring, because Joey is looking for one of Lake Erie's wall hangers to get mounted. That made me happy. :)
I have a day off tomorrow due to weather. I saw that one coming and had rescheduled them to this past Thursday, after cancelling an appointment, so I could get them in. Otherwise, they would have had to wait until July, and I had already rescheduled them once due to weather.
The next trip is a three day adventure, but they scheduled an extra day in case there was a weather day, and it looks like Monday might be that "weather day". So, instead of a Monday thru Wednesday trip...it looks like it will be a Tuesday through Thursday trip.
I have Friday scheduled off, because it's my Birthday, and a day off was a present to myself and to my dogs. :)
So....Stay tuned!
Capt Juls
