Fishing with Brandon, Dondi, and Alex 7/23/17

At 5:10 I was on the highway and headed over to Huron to meet up with Brandon, and his friends, Dondi and Alex.  Today was Brandon's birthday too. He has fished with me before, and this time he brought his two friends along.  Usually, when I'm on the highway at that time of the morning, I'm usually alone.  Well, this morning this truck is behind me, and then goes to pass me, but then settles back in behind me again.  I thought that was pretty strange, and figured I'm either being followed, or it's my crew, but Brandon didn't call to tell me they were behind me.

When I got to Huron, I pulled into the gas station, to see if the truck would follow, and to see who it was.  It followed me in, but I didn't recognize either occupant of the vehicle, so I told the attendant who was standing outside the door smoking a cigg that I thought they were following me, but they could be my crew. lol

And, yes, as it turned out, it was my crew....two of the three anyway. Brandon was coming in his own truck and his two friends were meeting us there. They saw my logo on my truck when they went to pass and saw that it was me, so they decided to just get behind me.  When they walked into the gas station Alex said with a big smile, "I think we're fishing with you today!" Which gave me relief, knowing they weren't up to any trouble. Both looked like they were in pretty good shape. lol

All three have been in the service...two Marines, and one Army, and now one is a fire fighter, one is a crane operator, and I'm not remembering what the third one does, but I think it was something cool too.

I told them I wanted to keep on driving over to Vermilion to launch this morning, because it would be closer to the area I wanted to fish, so they followed me over there.  It was only a short run out of Vermilion's harbor to the SW when I started marking fish, and set up on them. 

We started out with Flicker Minnows on one side of the boat and Bandits on the other side. The Flickers were running 100, 110, and 120 back to start, and the Bandits were running 85, 95, and 27/73 (snap weight on at 27 back and then let out another 73' for a total of 100') behind Off Shore inline boards. Speed with the cranks was 1.8-2.1mph

The first two fish were caught on the Flicker Minnow program, but most were caught on the Bandits.  Bandit colors were the Natural Perch, Crown Juls, IB Infected, and Blue/Chrome. Flicker colors were the Fancy Chart., perch, and natural shiner (gray back, white sides, red chin, and a black dot).

After the bite on the cranks slowed down, we changed things up to run all #2 Tadpoles with crawler harnesses. Speed was 1.5-1.8mph.  The crawlers lit up and we caught the biggest of our catch on those, with the baits going further in the mouths than the cranks were.  We had several pull backs on cranks, but no fish was there when we took the boards off. But, when a board went back with the crawlers, they were on and weren't coming off anytime soon.

We ended the morning with 14 nice walleye in the box, and threw back maybe a 1/2 dozen or so short fish. They guys were happy and had a fun morning, and that made me happy. :)

I'm off tomorrow, and will continue my binge watching of the "Game of Thrones" series on HBO.  My next trip is a three day trip with Steve Lubner and his crew.  I sure hope I get to do some perch fishing again this week....it's really starting to pick up and I would like to get in on more of that action!

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls