I was up to the islands thur and Fri and did not see a single mayfly.The journal I used to keep pinpointed the hatch occurring June 18th back 20yrs ago.Hope the Mayflys not going the way of the perch.
I fished with my buddy Tom both days.His boat is more a pleasure boat, than made for fishing.He only has 4 rod holders and not many options to screw in a few temporary ones either.We decided to try a quick evening fish Thursday so headed to nearby SE side kellies.Trolled for 2hrs with dipsies and went 2 for 5 with keeper walleye.Threw back a few junk fish and more shorts.Had something big on.Noticed it when drag started screaming.Though had a snag,then a steelhead.I felt the fish jerking and handed it to Tom then 2 min later came off.
Friday morning we headed north to the east side of kellies.Dipseys again and tried to cover the water column the best I could with our 4 dipsies.Started at 8am and only caught one fish and quite a few shorts during our first hour of fishing.Was working the depths to no avail.Finally I set a 3 setting at 40 and caught a nice fish.I then brought the one setting to 38 and changed up the spoons to three spoon harnesses and one spinner harness.The next 90 min we caught 10 nice size fish and virtually no shorts.Was just about to take off that harness that had caught nothing during all that time and it went off with fish #11.Was so confident that one of the other three rods was going to complete our limit in short order,I put the harness back in box and waited...and waited...and damn,what the hell.I finally put a bandit on a board and put that 4th rod back out.We fished through that same area for another hour and got one strike that did not hook up.Tom said lets go after that fishless hour.So 40 and 65 was our hot leads on 3 setting and a 38 on the 1setting.They were nice size too.Our 13 fish weight 33lbs.Midges were getting bad Friday on that flat lake.Moral of story is never assume that last fish is gonna be easy.Keep all those rods out till done.