Delayed Blog....Sorry! May 5th and 9th Fishing Trips...:)

Between work at my night job, my Sister and Brother in Law visiting, and getting my gardens ready for the season, I only have been out twice since April 30th.

May 5th: John Butts, a Canadian professional angler who I've known for several years, came down to deliver a boat in Michigan and then took a trip out with myself and Bob Luellen (My boat insurance man from World Wide Marine). 

We had a great time, but the wind was from the east and the bite was tough for everyone. At least that's what it was sounding like on the radio.  

We managed to catch a couple fish and moved around to several spots trying to locate a bigger pod of fish. They just don't seem to be in the numbers that Lake Erie is known for anymore.

We ran the usual spinner program with pinks and purples and whites...same blades as my other trips (blogs) too. 

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May 9th:  Today I fun fished with a facebook friend that answered my request for someone to fish with. We ran out of Catawba and headed up to the North side of Rattlesnake Island. We only marked a fish here and a fish there, and didn't get a bite, so we moved over to the area between Sugar Island and West Reef and didn't mark anything there either. 

We set a line for the white house on the ferry dock on North Bass and gave up when we witnessed the only three other boats there getting on plane and leaving that area. That's never a good sign!

We then ran out to the line between North Bass and Middle Island and the water was super clear there. And, again, we didn't mark any fish there, so we just kept heading East to the East side of Middle Island.

We set up and trolled for awhile, but gave that up when all we caught were little white perch stealing our crawlers.

Next stop was Kelly Island Shoal. Again, really clear water and only a mark here and a mark there. We trolled for an hour and nothing but a white bass...sigh.

Another phone call and we found out my next stop at Starve Island was void of fish too! What the heck? All these fish couldn't have left the area yet. What's going on?

So, I decided to go see what was happening up by Green Island. After another long run (thank goodness the lake was like glass today), we found a pack of about 75 boats all fighting for position in one small area on the North side of Green Island. I was fun fishing today, so I decided not to play bumper boats with the crowd and kept heading West out to D Can. We marked a few more fish than we had anytime previously, and we set our crawler harnesses out.

1 oz inline 33' back took a nice 4 pounder and a 2oz Tadpole 30 back took a nice 6 or 7 pound fish. Our speed most of the day was at 1.0 but I decided to bump it up to 1.3mph and that's when we got our hits.

Our time was up too fast it seemed, and my dog's bladders needed to be relieved, so we packed it in and headed back to the launch. 

It was a gorgeous day to be on the water today, but we could have used just a little more wind to help things along.

Thank you to John W. Thompson III for going fishing with me today. Your company was enjoyable. :) 

So much to do and so little time it seems...I'll be out again this Saturday (fun fishing before work), but I have to work the Mother's Day Brunch at the CIC on Sunday. :( 

I have a charter on Monday and Tuesday next week, so I hope to have better info for you then.

Capt. Juls