Memorial Day Fishing Trip with the Jacksons
by Capt Juls on 05/28/13May 27th, 2013
Charlene Jackson called me on Friday of last week, and said that she had seen my article in "The Beacon", (a local paper that I write a weekly fishing report for).
Last weekend, when they were here fishing on another charter boat, she picked up the paper in the hotel and took it home to Indiana with her.
She said that she and her husband owned a smaller boat and wanted to learn how to troll with it. I said, "Well, that's what I do best, and if you're good students, by the end of the 6 hours you will know how to run crawler harnesses behind OST boards and use spoons behind dipsies and jet divers."
My Ranger 621 is only a couple feet bigger than their boat, so it was a perfect fit for them. And, as I had promised, by the end of the 6 hours they were both running their respective sides of the boat without my help, except for a little guidance here and there to tweak things.
We started the morning off by launching at Mazurik's. We dropped in at American Eagle Shoal, but didn't mark anything, so we moved on out to the south side of Gull Island Shoal and didn't mark anything there either, so we moved once again....this time to Lucy's Point.
We set a trolling pass to the North side of Northbass Island, and I went about teaching them how to set up the rods with dipsies and jet divers. I explained how the dipsies have left and right side capabilities and explained the depth chart and how it works. I recently bought some 40 Tru-Trip Jet Divers that I was looking forward to trying out, since the radio is always on fire with announcements from the "Pooh Bear" and his other fleet of Captains saying things like, "40 Tru-Trips 45' and 50' back...another double", or "another one in the box"..."Just got a triple"!
The only difference between the old style jet divers and the new Tru-Trips is that the new ones have a release on them like the dipsies, so that when set properly, and a fish hits, it releases and you're not fighting the jet diver to the boat. The fish usually comes to the surface, unless it's a toad, and stays deep on its own. :)
Anyhooo...back to the story....
We caught one walleye and two sheephead at Lucy's, so we picked up and went to the west side of Northbass, where I had done so well the weekend before with Larry and Steve. This time, I pulled the crawler harness rods out of the rod locker and showed them how to hook the crawlers and explained how the lightest weights go on the outside boards and the heavier weights on the inside. Once we were set up and trolling, it wasn't long before we hooked up with some nice eaters.
It was the exact same program as last weekend with Larry and Steve. We ran 1 ounce inlines and 1 ounce Tadpoles 35 back and the 2 ounce Tadpoles 28' back. Our speed was between 1.1 and 1.3mph.
We made three passes...the first pass we caught three fish. The second pass we caught another three fish. And, the last pass we caught two fish, so now we had 9 of their 12 fish in the box.
It had started to rain with a couple hours to go, and the wind had switched from East to Southwest. The bite just seemed to go south, so we decided to move. I took a route back south around west reef and through the channel between Northbass and Middlebass Islands and stopped short of Lucy's point. We were marking some fish there, so we put the crawlers back out to see if we could catch three more fish, and finish out their limit.
An announcement on the radio had said that chartreuse was working well for someone, and the fish had moved higher in the water column. We made some quick adjustments and it wasn't long after that that a fish had hit one of our harnesses sporting a blade with a chartreuse underbelly, so I changed all the pink blades out to blades with chartreuse underbellies. Soon after doing that, we caught the last two fish and headed in.
It was a wet day, but it was a lot of fun fishing with Mr. and Mrs Jackson. They were very good students and I have no doubt that they will be able to take what they learned and use it on their home lake.
My next charter is June 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.
I'll be turning the big "5-0" on the 5th, so I'm hoping 4 successful days of fishing is a great way to celebrate my birthday this year. Fingers crossed!
Wish I could make it back to Wisconsin to celebrate the milestone with my twin brother and other family, but it looks like it will just be a party with me and my dogs...again....sigh.
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