Fishing with Chris, Tom, and Kevin 5/17/2021

[Capt Juls]

I woke up a little before 3am, before the alarm went off, so I got up and made some coffee. Dexter and I, went out to the back deck to check out the morning's weather. Dexter smelled something that he couldn't see, in the damp morning air, so he took off running to the back fence, to act all big and scary to any would be intruders. All critters now had fair warning that he would kill them if they came inside the fence. While he tended to his morning business, I sipped coffee and looked at my weather apps.

The iWindSurf forecast was calling for 5-15mph, out of the E at Middle Bass for most of the day. The weather app said it was supposed to be cloudy all day too, but neither of those things happened. The wind never arrived until the afternoon, and the sun was shining quite a bit this morning too. The air temp was somewhere between deciding if I should put my slippers on my bare feet, or leave the off. I'm guessing it was around 60 degrees when we launched at 5:30.


We left out of Catawba, and headed north. The program used the past two days is what was used first thing this morning. Some of the colors changed though.


Spros and Bandits were run on the starboard side, and Flicker Minnow (#11's) were run on the port side. The starboard side was set at (shortest to longest lead out behind Off Shore boards)...30', 40', 50', and 60' back (unassisted), and the port side was run at 40, 50, 55, and 60'.


Colors that caught fish today, were "Flashy Chartreuse" (FM11), "Purple Shiner" (FM11), "Blue Shiner" (FM11), and "Flashy Pearl" (FM11), Blue/Chrome (Spro), and "Taco Salad" (Bandit),


Speed was 1.7-2.0mph. Water temp was 57-58 degrees.
Some fish hit on the slow side and some hit on the fast side, and most were caught on the 40 and 60 foot leads on both sides.


We caught 12 healthy walleye, a few GIANT Sheephead, and one big White Perch. It was a slow bite for us this morning, and a frustrating one for me. I felt like it was going to be one of those, "I went left when I should have gone right" kind of days. Uffda! But, we worked at it and managed to grind out 12 good eaters for them to take home.


During the lulls between fish, we were kept entertained by Chris, who is a Capt of his own walleye fishing charter service over there in Vermilion, OH, called, "Seawise Charters", with a plethora of his funny "Dad Jokes".


He and his friends, Tom and Kevin, came out with me to learn more about using the Off Shore boards while trolling.
Mission Accomplished. They were setting out, and bringing them in, like a well oiled machine in no time at all. They had a good time, relaxed, enjoyed the good weather, and friendly banter....the music wasn't bad either...wink wink.


I'm off tomorrow, but will be back out for the rest of this week and weekend, before the next day off, so....


Stay tuned....


Capt Juls

[christian]

Hi thanks so much for all the helpful post..i just have one question. When you say from shortest to longest when using the same lure lets say bandit deep...you run inside at 30 then next 40 then 50 then 60 on the outside board...since they are short leads with the loop trick and let board fall back they dont get tangled? I run shallower longer leads outside and shorter deeper inside. But i notice when running same lure on relatively short leads as long as the are staggered like 10feet diff in leads and boards have separation and board is allowed to fall back tangles are avoided

[Capt Juls]

Hi thanks so much for all the helpful post..i just have one question. When you say from shortest to longest when using the same lure lets say bandit deep...you run inside at 30 then next 40 then 50 then 60 on the outside board...since they are short leads with the loop trick and let board fall back they dont get tangled? I run shallower longer leads outside and shorter deeper inside. But i notice when running same lure on relatively short leads as long as the are staggered like 10feet diff in leads and boards have separation and board is allowed to fall back tangles are avoided

I run my deeper leads on the outside boards and shorter leads on the inside. If I'm using snap weights, then they always go on the inside. I don't have my boards set to release, using the loop trick. It's hard enough teaching people to put the boards on right without adding the loop trick equation into it. I'm sure it's a better way to do it, but my system works in my boat.

[christian]

Thank you so much for the fast response. Yeah guess you have a good reason for the way you do it..your way seems like it would work better for my kids because the moment i trip the board all i do it yell to keep rod tip high and then the board gets submerged and turns into a mess with kids saying its hard to reel in... With adults the tripping method works great but kids are a different story..i may try your method next time with the kids and see if they like it and then i can do my normal way i do it when its just me and the wife

[itsbob]

You could run a shallower lure with a longer lead on an outside board,if that lure is a shallower running lure like a Perfect 10.But as juls said,longest leads outside and if adding weights,they go on inside boards.We switched to using the orange OR19 release and looping line last summer and it works great.Much easier to bring board in too.But to loop and put in release,can be more difficult to do than the black OR18 release. There is a definite learning curve to get used to using those orange release.Plus if you don't have the line behind the red OR16 pin,the board comes off.If the kids are having a difficult time reeling in a fish with board attached,you should reel line in and after remove board,hand rod to your kids.The fish we have been catching this year so far have been pretty heavy fish,so not easy for kids to reel a fish in going around 2mph.