Fishing Two Days with Harold and Jim Nelson 5/31 & 6/1/2024

**Capt Juls** · 06-01-2024, 05:00 PM

Harold, and his son, Jim, drove over from Iowa to fish with me, again. They had a good time last year, and I did, too. This past two days were even more fun than last year, even though the fish didn't cooperate as well as they did last year, on this same weekend.

Wanting to stay away from crowded areas, I opted to take a ride to an area up on the line, west of the islands. The wind forecast was calling for winds less than 3 mph for the morning, but that wasn't the case, early on. We launched out of Catawba at 5:30, even though there was a SW wind pushing waves into the docks...something I prefer not to do...and headed north, up to the line.

There were a lot of good fish marks, but there was also a huge Mayfly hatch emerging from the bottom, and halfway up the water column. My hopes for a great bite, diminished...knowing, I should probably pull out the crawler harnesses, and slow down. But, we ran cranks behind Off Shore boards, and spoons on dipsies for the first three hours. We caught a couple keepers, some sheephead, and a handful of shorts, before I decided it was going to be best to move to a new area, with less food for them to gorge on, and try crawlers.

We moved down in-between Lucy's and Gull, and started marking fish, so we set up. The harnesses were all weighted with 2oz inline weights, and set between 40 and 80 back, at a speed of 1.6-1.7 on the FishHawk. We started to pick up fish at a faster rate than running the cranks and spoons, so my guys were happy with that. We only caught 7 keepers yesterday, and maybe if I hadn't waited so long to make the decision to switch up presentations, and area, we probably would have limited. Who knows...
The bite seemed to get better around the time we had to head in.

We got back to the launch to find that my Vexus Trailer's tire had a roofing nail in the sidewall, and would have to be replaced. Jim was kind enough to remove the tire and put the spare on for me (Thanks, Jim!)
I took it over to Wieland's Auto and Marine. While Jim was changing the tire, I called Matt and told him what happened, and he said, "I think I have a tire that size in the shop". I drove over, and he had one....whew!
Matt put the new tire on in about 10 minutes, and now that tire is the spare tire. (Thanks, Matt!)

When I got home yesterday, my routine involves plugging in the boat batteries... and, to make a long story short...I forgot to plug them in overnight. I sent a text to Jim and told him what happened, and that it would be a later start this morning.
They were fine with that, because they could sleep in, and get a breakfast, before meeting me.

Alfie, my dog, was happy that it was a late start, because he got to go for a walk...and, smell stuff, before I left for the day.
By 7:30, the charger read 50% on the trolling motor batteries. That would be enough, if I kept the power level on the Terrova at 4, instead of 5, and didn't do any speed bursts with it.

We launched out of Mazurik's at 8am. The wind was around 8-10mph out of the SE, so the waves on the east side of Kelly's were 2 foot or less.

Water temp was 66.8 degrees.

We set up with the same program as yesterday, and pulled a keeper in the first 15 minutes, but it would be a while before the next one would come. The fish marks were tight to the bottom, but every so often they would be low to mid-column, and we would catch one here and one there. It wasn't a fast bite, but it was consistent enough to keep everyone interested and enjoying the day. The highlight of the day was when Jim caught a nice 28" fish, and was all smiles.

Luckily, there were no hiccups in my routine today...the boat is plugged in, gassed up, and ready to go again. But, tomorrow's trip has been rescheduled to next Sunday, because he's a "Fair weather fisherman", and tomorrow morning is calling for showers and scattered thunderstorms, most of the morning. But, I didn't water my garden, so it will probably miss us now.