Fishing with Rick and Kirk 11/7/2021

[Capt Juls]

I was looking forward to walleye fishing this morning, so I was a little ancy, and left the house too early.....again.

It's hard for me to time when I should leave the house in the morning now, because I have to run to the heated storage bldg to pick up the boat first, instead of just walking out to my driveway. I miss that. But, it's also super nice for it to be in a clean and heated storage building for the cold months.


Anyway.... I was picking my guys up at the Country Inn and Suites at 7AM, so I knew I should leave by 6:00, so I could hook up the boat, go get it gassed up, and throw some bags of ice in the cooler, before heading to their hotel.


Rick and Kirk are brothers, who drove in from Indiana to fish with me. Well, actually, they were scheduled to fish with me back on April 22nd, but we didn't get the trip in due to wind. So, they rescheduled a couple of times over this past summer....only to find more wind.
But, Mother Nature was kind, and we were finally able to chase some walleye out on the lake this morning.


I showed up at their hotel at 6:30... I was a 1/2 hour early. I texted Rick, and told him I was early, and out in the parking lot, but explained that they could take their time, if they needed it.


However, Rick was already outside by his truck and boat, and ready to go, so he just had to let Kirk know. It only took him a couple of minutes to come down and jump in the truck. We hit Dempsey's launch around 6:50, and we were on our way out by 7. The brother's goal today was to learn how to run inline planer boards more efficiently, because their experience using them in their own boat, yesterday, was somewhat problematic from what he described.


We didn't run far, and worked an area from 17 feet deep out to 30 feet. We set up with Bandits set behind 3 Off Shore boards on both sides, along with one dipsey off each corner. The dispsies would prove worthless for us after 2 hours, so I removed them and put out a 4th board on each side.


The leads were short today. At one point, I had one side deeper and one side higher in the water column. Early in the morning, we were set at 20, 30, and 40 back on one side, and 50, 40, 35 back, on the other side, and caught fish on the 35 and 40 settings, and one on the 50 setting. But, as the sun got higher in the sky, I changed up one side to run deeper (as we moved out to the deeper water). The deeper side ran 110, 97, 77, and 63 back, and the higher side ran at 50, 45, 40, and 35 back. 35, 40, and 45 back were the hot leads, but 97 back also caught a couple.


Our speed was kept between 2.0 and 2.4mph. The water temp was 52.4 degrees where we were.


I had the guys setting lines, and reeling in boards, and netting their own fish...with some "instruction" from me thrown in there from time to time, because that's the only way to get someone to learn quickly. Make them do it. I have every confidence in the world, that these two will be able to jump in their own boat tomorrow and repeat what we did today


The brothers did a fantastic job this morning, and managed to boat our 3-person limits....with only one tangle to speak of, and it was a minor one at that. They said they learned a lot and are feeling more confident about using inline boards now, too. So, that makes me happy...


Tomorrow, I have another walleye trip, and will be headed out of Mazurik's around 7AM with Pete Knaar and his crew.


I did bring the boat home for an overnight visit with my driveway, so I could leave at a normal time tomorrow. Only going to be a low of 50 degrees overnight.


Stay tuned....


Capt Juls