Fishing with Dee, Dan, and Steve 5/15/18

They showed up right on time and we enjoyed some chit chat with other captains and their guests. I was watching the RadarScope app to see which way the thunderstorm was going, and it appeared it was heading right for the area. With this info, I told my guys to go back to Little Ted's Cottages to wait for my call. We would wait it out until the radar showed no more lightning, or that it was moving off.

I didn't drive home, because I didn't want to confuse my dogs, so I stopped at the car wash that was still closed and parked the Ranger in one of the wash bays (in case it was a heavy downpour), and set about re-rigging rods and getting things set up.  It took me about an hour, and when I checked the sky, it looked like everything went north, and the radar confirmed that.  I jumped in the truck and headed to Mazurik's.

I called the crew when I pulled into Mazurik's launch at 7am, and told them it was time to go. They showed up about 20 minutes later, and we headed out.

I had switched everything over to spoons for the morning. The Off Shore boards would pull #2 Tadpoles with a 5' fluorocarbon lead with a Stinger spoon. Then, I had two rods with 40 Tru-Trip Jets with the same leads and spoons.  I had some dipsies set up too, but I decided that 6 rods was all that this crew was going to be able to handle today.  Speed was 1.9-2.2mph

We caught five walleye on spoons, South of Kelly's, while more and more boats moved in the area...and, if you know me, you know I don't like fishing in crowds, and will take off to find some other fish in a less busy area. So, we headed to the north side of Kelly's.  

At this time, I switched out the Tadpoles/spoons for Bandits, and kept the spoons on the Jet rods. Speed was 1.8mph 

We caught  a couple white bass there. The Helix was not showing me a lot of marks, or fish activity, on the screen, so we moved NW to the Bass Islands. 

This time, I put the Bandit rods away and pulled out the rods already rigged with Crawler harnesses. We ran two rods with 1oz inlines at 30 and 40 back, and 2oz inlines 20/23/25/27 back...speed was 1.4mph....all of them caught fish.

We had about a 1/2 left, when a strong northwest wind picked up. I looked at the Davis Bessie smoke stack and saw it bent over, so I told my guys to pick up lines and that we should head back in.  I told them I would add their 1/2 hour to tomorrow's trip, since it was going to be a nicer day...NO RAIN! Ha!

Anyway, we ended the day with 16 in the box...and, about 8 that didn't make it to the boat...a catfish, couple of sheepshead, white perch, and white bass. So, it was a fun day catching as well as fishing.  It kept my crew busy, and there was often chaos in the boat since they are still learning all the techniques I use.  If I'm not careful though, they may throw me overboard for sounding like a nagging wife!! SMH....lol

I have the same crew tomorrow, and tomorrow I will bite my tongue more...and, let them learn from their mistakes, instead of me seeing what's going to happen and trying to correct it before it does. We'll see how that goes. After all, it's not always about how many fish make it to the box....right? I just don't want to have to peel line off the reels to fix tangles....that will throw my reels out of their calibration....lol

So, stay tuned...