Fishing with My Cousins 7/23-24/2018

[Capt Juls]

Fishing with My Cousins 7/23-24/2018

The past two days I had the good fortune to fish with my cousin, Jim Eichner, and his son, Doug, and his nephews, Joe and Matt Courville (my cousin, Polly's, sons).

I met Jim each morning at Big Bopper's, since we both get up early, and the rest of the crew slept in until it was time to go to the launch.

Yesterday, I stopped off at Rickard's to pick up some shiners for perch fishing, but as luck would have it all the bait shops around here were out of Emerald Shiners....they only had Golden Shiners. But, the perch will still bite on the Goldies....so, don't worry too much about not having the Emeralds if you come here to do some perch fishing.

To make a long story short....the perch'n wasn't so hot for me and my crew. I suppose I made the mistake of moving around too much this time, and should have shown more patience and stayed put on a spot that had sporadic bites. They would come and go...in waves. We would catch 4, 5, maybe 6, and then....nothing. Then, they would show up again. I kept thinking there would be a better spot, but I never found it. Just one of those days. The guys enjoyed the day anyway.

It was a lazy day for everyone. Jim had a three hour difference, since he and Doug are from out near Seattle, WA...and, the rest of the crew was from Illinois farm country, and they were happy just relaxing for the day. It would have been really nice if the misty rain had stayed off the lake and kept itself confined to my yard though.

Fast forward to today....and walleye.

Jim and I met at Bopper's at 4:30 and enjoyed some good food before he went back to get the boys, and I went on ahead to get some ice for the cooler. I would meet them at the Walmart in 15 minutes.
The plan was to head to Huron in my truck, and launch by 5:45. Now that the Sun isn't breaking the horizon until 6:15 we don't have to launch at 5:30 anymore. We can wait until 5:45 or 6am.

We launched right on time and headed north out of the river. The conditions this morning were pretty good, but it wasn't setting up to be one of the spectacular sunrises I'm used to seeing. I was hoping for a good one too, because they are all Facebook friends and see my "Good morning" posts with the sunrises, and I wanted them to see a sunrise in person, because it's always SO much better in real life.

As we headed north, I watched the Helix for the usual signs of life down below and found the marks I wanted to see out in 43 foot of water. I deployed the Ulterra and set it at power level 5. Then, turned on the 15 ETEC and locked it in the straight position. I use that to push the boat and steer with the Ulterra. Keeping the bow mount trolling motor at a lower power level will make it last all day. And, I can tweak the speed either by using the power levels on the Ulterra, or by using the conveniently located RPM button that sits on top of the tiller arm of the baby ETEC.

My crew had never used Dipsy Divers, Tru-Trip Jets, or Off Shore planer boards before, so after a quick lesson..."boot camp style", (because we had fish coming in one after the other)..they were running the lines like champs within the hour.

The program was the same as the last walleye trip out. Tru-Trip Jets at 90-100 back, Dipsies on the 1 setting at 61 back, the Dipsy on the 3 setting at 75 and 85 back, two Flicker Minnows out behind the Off Shore boards at 55 and 120 back, and two BayRats at 120 and 125 back behind Off Shores. Speed was 2.4-2.6mph.

The lake's conditions were nice today with waves 1' or less, and light winds out of the SE. The morning was foggy, but it lifted fast and cleared up by 8am. The rest of the morning was partly cloudy in the high 70's to the low 80's.

Since it was family, and they are all skinny folks, I broke my rule of only taking up to three people and took 4 of them. That gave us a 5 person limit of 30 walleye to take today, which we managed to catch....along with a few lost ones, and a couple of short ones that are still swimming.

Cousin Jim has a fascination with Sheepshead, so he was quite pleased to catch a few of those over the past two days too. He also wanted to catch a catfish, but they managed to elude our baits both days....oh well...I don't like their slime all over my carpet anyway, so I was okay with not seeing them. Seems like I catch one or two every trip out now, and they are getting bigger and bigger each year!

Our 30 walleye went 51 pounds at Port Clinton Fish...and, they told my guys that they had the biggest fish of the day...."so far"....so, that made them happy, which then made me happy....woot! woot!

Tomorrow, I have my regulars, Steve and Jeremy Champman. We'll be heading out from Mazurik's to find some walleye and then, maybe, some perch on the way back in.

Stay tuned....