Fishing with Larry, Tony, and Rudy 5/7/2021

**Capt Juls** · 05-07-2021, 02:49 PM

It was raining this morning, when I woke up and let the dog out. I looked at the weather apps to see what was in store for us, and found the rain would be clearing out by 7am. I had told my Indiana crew that we would delay the trip for one hour, so instead of meeting them at 5:30, I would meet them at 6:30 instead.

It was pretty windy when I picked them up, and stated, "We can go gas up the boat and stop for breakfast, if you want, we need to waste a little time, and let this wind die down a bit, before we head out on the lake. It's going to be rough out there right now". They weren't really hungry, but agreed, so we headed to the gas station to get ice and gas first.

When we were at the gas station, the back end of the rain clouds moved out, and so did the wind. I said, "The winds have laid down, so why don't we skip breakfast and just head to the launch to see what the lake is looking like right now". Again, they agreed, so we headed over to Catawba to launch.

We were on the protected side of the peninsula, so it was calm right outside the launch, and over to Port Clinton, but you could see the telltale peaks of bigger waves out beyond the point. However, I think it was more of an optical illusion than reality, because once we were headed north, it wasn't that bad....waves were 1-3's from the NNE.

We motored up to Rattlesnake Island and set up with a SSW trolling pass.

Same program as yesterday....

Spros set anywhere from 40-70 back, starting with the colors that worked yesterday too. Blue/chrome, Golden Perch, Purple Glass Perch, and Marble Brown. I put a Lemon-Lime out again, just to see if it would work in that area, like it did before. It caught one, but again, was taken off and replaced with another Purple Perch. Someone was on the radio at one point and mentioned that a couple of Wonderbread colored Bandits were working well, so I dug a red one and a chartreuse one out of the box and set one out each side. Both caught fish, so whites are working too.

The speed was the same as yesterday too....1.8-2.0mph.

Water temp was 52 degrees up by Rattle and Green, but was 55 degrees by Catawba. The water was a bit muddier nearer Catawba, so with the sun coming out mid-morning, it warmed up faster than the cleaner water up north.

We made one long pass from Rattlesnake all the way back to Catawba, picking off fish here and there as we trolled along. The bite was fast enough to keep everyone interested, but not so fast to have any kind of fire drills going on. It just turned out to be a very nice day to be on the lake.

We caught our 4-person-limit with a bonus white bass, but that was the only non-target species we caught today.

The winds laid down to almost nothing (Davis-Bessie's steam stack was almost straight up in the air by 10:30-11:00), the sky was partly cloudy, and the air temps were jumping up into the high 50s. For a day that started out pretty crappy, it had turned into one of those beautiful days we all want to have out there.

Rudy, who is only 9 years old, reeled in his share of fish, with the help of his Dad and Grandpa. His "laid back" excitement of the sport, made me remember fishing with my Dad, and how those memories have lasted me a lifetime. I hope that we made the same kind of memories for their family today too.

Rudy wants to come back to go perch fishing sometime, so that makes me happy!

Tomorrow's forecast isn't looking very good, so I have already rescheduled tomorrow's trip to the 23rd instead. (Those scheduled days off are coming in handy...I can use them for reschedules, but now if the weather turns good for the next several weeks, I'll be one tired puppy, because my scheduled days off are disappearing! Deep sigh)

Sunday is on notice too, but I'm hoping we can get out on Sunday.

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls