Fishing with Matt, Brian, and John....5/21/2022

[Capt Juls]

Matt, Brian, and John came up yesterday, from Cincinnati, and were instructed to meet me at Mazurik's at 5:30, this morning. I showed up there at 4:45, so I had time to change out baits, and get the dipsey rods ready for their first use of the season.

The crew showed up at 5:25, and we were launched by 5:30. We weren't going far, and I'm pretty sure everyone already knows the area, because there were 100+ boats scattered throughout the South Passage. But, being one of the first ones on the lake, we were able to get a first pass in, without any interruptions in our navigation.


I've been hearing, lately, that spoons were taking fish at higher speeds now, so I thought it was time to pull out the dipsies this morning. I love the dipsey program. It's so easy to run them. It takes little time to check/change baits, or see if a small fish is hanging on.


We ran the inside dipsies on the zero setting, and the outside dipsies on the 2 setting. Zero settings were set at 25 and 27, and the 2 settings were set at 31 and 35, and sometimes 40. Scorpion Stinger spoons and Yeck spoons did their job. Colors didn't seem to matter...I had a little bit of every color down, and they all took fish.


Speed was 2.5 mph.


Two Bandits ran on each side of the boat, but only two walleye were caught on them. Blue chrome at 37 back, and Carrot Top at 43 back, running behind the Off Shore boards.


The spoon action was very good though. It kept my crew VERY busy, reeling, re-setting, checking every odd wiggle in the rod tip, to see if it was a fish...then, re-setting the dipsey again...only to turn around, look at it, and ask, "Is that a fish? It looked like a fish hit it". "There's only one way to find out", I said, pointing to the rod, and smiling. I said, "Be my guest". He laughed, and picked it up. Sometimes, there was a fish, and sometimes, there wasn't.


We caught a few short fish this morning too. I've only caught two short fish all spring, so far....until this morning. I think we had about a 1/2 dozen, or so.
The rest of the fish, were anywhere from 16" to 22".


We had their 3 limits in about 3 1/2 hours, but then struggled to get our last limit. We got done a little early, due to a system that was pushing through, so we ended with 22 today. I think we lost about a half dozen too. But, that's going to happen when you're fishing with spoons.


The two larger fish in our cooler were caught on the Bandits.


I'm off for a few days, and will be back out later this week.


Stay tuned....


Capt Juls

[cjsfishn]

We were north of you by a couple miles and couldn't get a fish on a spoon after 0730. Switched to all bandits at 0830, 70 to 100 back. Speed was 2.0 to 2.4 in 28 to 38 fow. Thought you might appreciate another local option. Finished at 1115.