Fun Fishing....Walleye.... 8/16/15

[Capt Juls]

I realize this is a couple days late, but it's the first chance I've had to get caught up enough to sit down and write this blog.

After driving 18 hours from Nakina, ON Saturday after a 10 day vacation, we arrived home at 12am on the 16th. I had accepted an invite to fish aboard the "Pirate Clipper" that morning, so I would only be getting 4 1/2 hours of sleep, before getting up, to get ready to fish.

When I do not have charters lined up of my own, then I take the opportunity to first mate aboard the "Pirate Clipper", so I can keep fishing and learn how they do things on the big boats. Sometimes, I get to drive it, and sometimes I get to tend the lines. Either way, I have fun doing it.

The "Pirate Clipper" is the newest boat belonging to Capt Eric Litton who owns "EyeCatacher Charters", and is a beautiful 37 foot TollyCraft. So, needless to say, they fish totally differently than how I do it on my Ranger.

Instead of running little Off Shore inline planer boards that attach directly to each rod line, they run the big boards that run out to the sides off of a tow line on each side, and the rod lines are then attached to the tow lines via releases, so they can run a lot more lines than I do.

The advantage I have over their big boats is the fact that I can make much smaller turns when I need to stay on a small pod of fish, and I can also move more easily from area to area, because my 300 ETEC only uses a fraction of the gas those big gas guzzlers do! Woot! Woot!

I only take up to three people on my beautiful sparkly Ranger, and the "Pirate Clipper" can take up to 8 people (6 customers and the Capt and first mate) on that boat. Capt Eric also runs a 30 foot SportCraft that is the namesake of his business...the "EyeCatcher".

So, if you have too many people to fish with me, I highly recommend that you give Capt Eric a call at 614-679-2616. It's a great boat to fish off of...and, by the way, the Captain is a great guy.

So, back to fishing on Sunday...

We headed out at 6:30am and headed east of Kelly's Island, to the vast water between Vermilion and Lorain. It took us an hour to get out there from Anchor's Away Marina, so the Capt just put it on Auto Pilot and we just kept a look out for floating logs and net flags.


Once we got to the area we wanted to fish, the boards were set out, and the rod lines hooked to the tow lines. We had 6 people on board the Pirate (just fun fishing with friends, so time was not an issue)....myself, Eric, Little John, Chad, Vicki, and another Chad, so we ran 12 lines. 5 Board lines on each side of the boat and one dipsey diver on each side. The starboard side ran Scorpion spoons behind Tru-Trip Jet Divers 70-100 back, and the other side ran Bandits behind 2oz inline sinkers 115 to 130 back. And, the dipseys were set on the #1 1/2 and #2 settings at 70-75 back with double willow leaf crawler harnesses. We kept the speed at 1.7-1.8kts.

The morning bite was very slow, and the chatter on the radio confirmed that it was the same for most everyone out there. We would get a fish here and there, but it wasn't the "fire drill" happening like it did the afternoon the day before for friends who were out. So, when the whining started about how slow it was, I just kept telling them to be patient. They would turn on soon enough. The fish were stacked out there. I haven't seen marks on this end of the lake like that since April and May! We weren't leaving until we had our 36 fish in the boat!


Sure enough, around 1pm they turned on and we were catching doubles and triples with many of them really nice fish. We had 4 that were true "Fish Ohio's". By 4pm we were headed back in. And, I was ready to go in. I was SO tired from my trip home from the Canada trip, and then fishing all day, that I knew I would be passed out as soon as I hit my bed when I got home.

I do not have any trips scheduled for August until the last weekend, so if anyone is looking for some good walleye or perch fishing right now, give me a shout! I'm dying to get back out there in the Ranger, and catch some of those big fish to the east!

I guess, unless I book some trips here soon....I won't have much to blog about until September and October. Those months are starting to fill up, and will be a great two months, if Momma Nature lets me get them all in.

Capt Juls