I
arrived at Mazurik's at 5am. The remnants of a full moon lit up the
parking lot, pushing away the darkness. My crew was supposed to meet me
there at 5:15, but they were early too. Yay! 
The sky
starts getting light enough to see by 5:15 now...and, by 5:30AM it's
almost light enough to not need the running lights lit up on the boat.
With a 5-10mph SSW wind, we headed north out of Mazurik's to the area
between the Bass Islands, Middle Island, and Kelly's Island...to look
for a starting point.
I set the Ranger down off plane, to take a picture of the sunrise...and,
look for good fish marks on the Humminbird. After finding some decent
marks, we started to set up. Randy has fished for Bass all his life,
and had contacted me a little while ago to set this trip up as a
"learning" trip. He wanted to learn how to troll successfully for
walleye. He went out and bought a used Ranger 621, and all the trolling
equipment he thought he needed, from reading material from the internet
message boards, and blogs like this one.
After showing them how to put the Off Shore boards on the line, and set
them out, they finished the task of getting the other 5 lines
out...showing me, that they were quick learners. (Whew!) We started
catching small fish (throw backs) right away, and a couple of "keepers".
We were not on monster fish, but the action was such that they were
going to be able to stay busy learning how to shuffle inline boards
around without tangling them all up.
Randy
said, "I only run two lines/boards per side right now, because I don't
want to deal with the tangles". I smiled knowingly, and said, "Well, by
the end of the trip you'll be able to run 4 per side. We'll start with
three, until I see you can handle that... then, we'll add a fourth one
to each side."
Around
6:30AM, the other charter boats started to arrive in droves, so we
picked up lines and headed further north towards the Canadian line,
where it was less congested. By mid morning my crew was running that
fourth board on each side of the boat. At that time, we were running
Bandits anywhere from 50 to 100 back at 2.1-2.3mph. We had a 2oz snap
weight on each of the inside lines at 20/110 (20' back, put the snap
weight on , and let it out another 90')... and, those caught fish also.
After we
moved north, we reset the presentation from Bandits to crawler
harnesses. We set up with a 1oz inline weight on the outside, on each
side, and two 2oz inlines on each side. We took the 4th board out of
the lineup to make it easier, because I thought it would get pretty busy
using meat. We caught a lot of little buggers, with a larger one here
and there, that could go in the cooler, but it wasn't until we switched
the weights over to all 3oz and put them out from 25-45' back that the
ratio of little fish to keeper sized fish flip flopped. I think the
heavier weights were getting the crawlers down through the little fish
faster, or something. I'm not sure, but whatever it was...it was
working.
We were
only out for 6 hours so, we were all done at 11:30 one short of a 3 man
limit.....close, but no cigar. lol Oh well....they had fun, learned a
lot, and can now take what they have learned and apply it in their own
fishing outings on Randy's boat.
Tomorrow's
trip has been rescheduled, due to the fact that they are older gents
who have fished with me a couple of times before, and the lake was going
to be pretty bouncy....fishable, but bouncy. They don't have strong sea
legs, so I knew it wouldn't be that much fun for them, and decided to
offer them another date on the calendar. He said he would like to
schedule a perch trip before the end of the season instead.
Sunday is
still on weather watch. The last time I looked the wind forecast for
Sunday went from ugly to fishable, so we're keeping an eye on it to see
if it changes again tomorrow.
Stay tuned....
Capt Juls
Captain Julia "Juls" Davis
rngrgal@gmail.com
www.julswalleyefishingadventures.com
www.julswalleyefishingadventures.com
My Boat: 2017 Ranger 621 FS rigged with a 300 Evinrude G2
Humminbird Helix 12 SI CHIRP Mega Imaging Gen2
Humminbird Helix 10 DI Mega Imaging Gen2
Minn-Kota Ulterra 112 w/iPilot LINK
Specializing in 1-3 person walleye and perch charters
