Day 1 of 4 with Marc and Jim 7/12/2022

Without going into a long story, my water heater is not working at the moment, so I had to heat water on the stove and take a sponge bath, instead of a nice awakening shower, this morning.  Okay...I could deal with that. It wasn't so bad, but my hair really needs a washing. lol

Then, I get to the hotel to pick up Marc and Jim, my long time customers from Wisconsin, and as Jim walks up he says, "We don't have our Ohio fishing licenses. We were here 6 hours, and completely forgot to go get them". It was 4:45, and none of the bait shops are open that early, so I said, "No problem, the Sun's coming up later now, so we have time. We can run over to the Fisherman's Wharf...they open at 5am".  We get there, and the sign on the door says, "No fishing licenses sold". Arrggghhh... Okay, take a deep breath, it's not a problem. I'll just use my phone and do it online for them....that turned into a half hour ordeal, but we got it done. 

We finally get to the gas station to gas up and get ice. I'm watching the wind forecast on iWindSurf, which was calling for gusts to 30, but the buoys were only showing 10-15mph at real time.  So, we went to Mazurik's first, to check the lake. It looked good, but there was absolutely nobody else there at 5:45. "That's weird", I thought. Did they know something I didn't?  I thought about it for a little bit, and decided to go launch at Dempsey's, because if the wind did pick up, it was closer to where I wanted to target fish, and would be a better, more protected, ride back to the launch, than Mazurik's would have been.

We launched at 6am and headed out through Bay Point Marina and out to in front of Cedar Point. The Solix wasn't marking anything there in 35 feet of water, so I kept going east, towards the white condos....still in 35-36 feet of water. Fish started marking on the sonar just east of the condos, so I powered the big motor down and deployed the Ulterra and the baby Merc, and just kept our heading to the ENE with the waves behind us, and on the starboard corner. 

Speed was set at 2.3-2.5mph

The dipsies were set first, in the usual program of the zero and two settings, at 30/35, and 40/50 back, respectively, with Scorpion Singer spoons and Yeck spoons.

Two Off Shore planer boards were run out each side, with Bandits on the port side and Flicker Minnow 11s on the starboard side. Bandits were at 80 and 55 back, and the Flickers were at 95 and 65 back.  The Bandit at 80 had a huge pullback, but whatever it was, got off.  The Flickers did nothing, so I changed them out to Bandits, also.  This time, they were set with 2 oz Guppy weights at 50/65 (total 115) and 50/55.  Both took a nice keeper walleye.  The unassisted Bandits also took a walleye each, but the spoon bite was definitely the entertainer this morning.

It was pretty much non-stop action, with fish from 6" to 18". Not monsters, by any means, but we managed to put their two limits in the cooler, along with 2 of mine, before we decided to make the long run back in.

They are older gents, so I took it slow, so they wouldn't get beat up. These are the same two that rescheduled from three weeks ago, when it was really hot out, and pretty windy, and I had told them to stay home.  

They both did very well, since I kept the boat from rocking too much, by going with the waves. Luckily, the fish were okay with that direction too. :)

They had fun, and are looking forward to a less windy day tomorrow.

Tomorrow's forecast is calling for light west winds less than 10mph out of Huron, so we will be driving over there in the morning, and launching in the river.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls