Fishing with Eric Vogel 3/2/2024

**Capt Juls** · 03-02-2024, 03:49 PM

After a good 8 hours of sleep, I got up at 2am to have my coffee, check the weather apps, and get the dog outside to relieve himself. The weather apps informed me of a decent morning ahead. It was calling for cloudy, chilly, and damp to start the morning, but the fine mist that was in the air, early this morning, dissipated by the time we headed out of Mazurik's, at 7am.

Eric drove in from Nebraska yesterday, to today and tomorrow.

We headed east from the launch, and marked fish the entire way, so we didn't go far. We were over 35 feet of water, and the marks were mostly below 20', but there were several that were hanging in that 15-20' range that I like to target, so we broke out the Bandits, and P-10s, to start.

With only 6 lines running behind Off Shore boards, I let Eric run the Bandits on his side, and I put out 3 P-10s with 2oz snap weights. Working off the program that worked for me during the previous trip, I set the outside one at 35/35, the middle one 30/30, and the inside one 25/25. I'm sure I didn't let them run long enough, but I wasn't "feeling it", and took them off. I replaced them with Bill Lewis PWCs at (outside to inside) 70, 53, and 40 back. (The Bill Lewis PWCs run a lot deeper than Bandits, with shorter leads.... example: Bandit at 65 back, is 15' and the PWC at 65 back, is 20').

Eric ran the Black Headed Wonderbread at 70, RC Crush at 60, and the Red Headed Wonderbread at 50 back.
Speed was 1.2-1.4 on the FishHawk, and showing 1.7-19 on the Helix's GPS/SOG...as we went from west to east.

We just kept going around in slightly different circles, as we worked an area that had different groups of fish, moving west. When we would get over good marks, we usually got bit. The more scattered fish marks, were on the move, I think, and their goal was to keep moving west, but I could be wrong....I don't speak fish, so they couldn't tell me what their plans were for the day.

The Black Headed WB was by far the best color this morning, with RC Crush coming in with a close second. A "Slim Shady Custom" called, "Mint Condition" (pictured in the photos) caught the biggest girl of the morning...a nice 28 incher... (Eric released her).
Blue/Chrome at 60 back took one fish, and a Bill Lewis Black Headed WB at 40 back took one, too.

We switched out some colors that weren't producing and ended up running colors that all had taken a fish or two.

The bite was better earlier in the morning, and slowed down as the morning progressed. It was still a pretty steady bite, just not as fast as we all know it can be on this lake.

The water is still cold....35.5 off of Marblehead

Eric had fun, and is looking forward to fishing again tomorrow, and that makes me happy!

We will be out again tomorrow...same bat time and same bat channel.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls