Fishing with Jim and Harold... June 2, 2023

[Capt Juls]

I thought I was going to be late picking my crew up at 5AM, since I had to water my gardens before leaving, since we haven't had any rain for a couple of weeks now, but I made it two minutes before I had to be there, whew!

Jim and his Dad Harold drove in from Iowa for a two day trip with me, and luckily, the weather is perfect for it. This morning, the skies were clear, the air temp was 67 degrees, and the wind was pretty much nonexistent. The lake was flat. We put in at Catawba at 5:30 and headed north again.


As a beautiful sunrise began, we set up over 31 feet of water on the west side of the islands. The Terrova steered us northwest, as the baby Merc putted along at a speed of 2.2-2.3mph. The Fish Hawk was reading a water temp of 67 degrees and a speed of 2.0mph, down below at 15 feet. The Helix was reading 69 degrees on the surface.


There was a lot of switching up on depths and colors, so I'm only going to mention what worked for us today, and save myself a lot of typing.


Bandits behind the Off Shore boards on the port side ran at 65, 45, and 35 back. Colors were "Buck Fever" (a Domka Outdoors color), and a color by Eriegardless Custom Lures called, "Bagger".
EDIT: After looking up the color on Kelly Schmidt's shop page, I think I was actually running two Bill Lewis PWCs, because the "Bagger" color for the PWCs is different than the one with the same name for the Bandit. The Bagger Bandit has a pink belly, and the Bagger PWC has a chartreuse belly. The one we used today had the chartreuse belly. It was a hot bait this morning...running at 35 and 45 back.


On the starboard side we ran two Bandits. The "IB Infected" (DJ Custom Eye Lure color) at 70 back and "Green Clown" (stock color) at 75 back. Each of those took several fish, too.


The dipsies/spoons were not as productive today as the cranks were, so we might just run a couple more boards tomorrow, and take out the dipsies on the three settings. They each might have caught one today. The zero setting at 30 and 36 did okay...not great, but good enough to use them again. The most productive spoon was a blue/silver/hammered Scorpion.


Jim and "Dad", as I called him, are learning how this trolling gig works, and are liking it. We're still working on the "turn the clicker off when reeling in" part, but other than that, they are doing a great job. They will get more practice tomorrow.


I haven't decided if I want to launch out of Catawba or Mazurik's yet. I'll decide by morning.


Stay tuned....


Capt Juls