Fishing with Ray and Debbie Willig 8/21/17

We sat with my friend "Trapper", who often fishes by himself, (and with me sometimes), so we could catch up on things, since we hadn't been at Big B's at the same time in a long time. :)

Trapper gave me some good intel on some walleye east of Kellys, so since the lake was relatively calm, we changed our plans of just perching...to doing walleye first, and then perch'n.

We weren't that far from Cedar Point, and caught our first keeper walleye on a stock Black/Chrome Bandit.  I was running them with 2oz snap weights 25-30' in front of the lures and then putting them out a total distance of 70, 75, 80, 85, 90 and 95 before putting the Off Shore boards on.  

We started with a speed of 2.4mph, but a call to Trapper on the radio to find out what his speed was the day before, told me to slow it down to 1.8-1.9mph.  That's when we caught our first fish of the morning.

Trolling for another mile, we would only pick up a couple more short walleye, even though the marks on the Helix were pretty darn good.  I thought maybe it was a directional thing, so we turned to head back west again. And, since they didn't want it at what I thought was a fast speed of 2.4-2.5mph, and the slower speed of 1.8-1.9 only produced a few fish. 

But, thanks to a Facebook posting by a "friend",  who mentioned he had the same thing happening to him the other day, and suggested I go "crazy fast" to get better results. So, I did. Or, what I thought was crazy fast...anyway.  I sped up the baby ETEC to move us at 3.0mph...............and, it worked!

As soon as the boat started moving faster the starboard side, inside board, went back. Then, the middle board, and finally the outside board. We had three short fish in 5 minutes of speeding it up. Then, we caught another keeper walleye, a giant sheepshead, and a white perch. And, then, another keeper walleye and more shorts.

We had discussed going perch'n since we had three good eaters in the box, and still had three hours to try to find some "gold".  Capt Kevin texted me to tell me he had already caught 36 perch on one of my previous spots, so I told my crew and they were anxious to go and try it. So, we packed up the walleye gear and headed back to the island area.

Once we arrived to the spot and found Kevin, he mentioned that they hadn't caught any in the time it took me to get from the Cedar Point area to South Bass Island. lol  Just my luck!  We set up on some good marks and gave it a shot, but it wasn't meant to be....nothing bit us there......we moved 25 yards away on some better marks....nothing bit our offerings there either. It was frustrating, because I had fresh emeralds this morning!! Uffda!! They should have been jumping on those minnows..lol  

Anyway....I digress...

We moved one more time to the NW corner of Kelly's and caught a handful of nice ones. It was not what I was looking forward to, but it was what it was.

Ray and Debbie had a good time, and relaxed with a few beers, and good conversation.  They were looking forward to watching the Solar Eclipse after we got off the water, and even had the glasses for it.  They gave me a pair of glasses too, so I could watch it, but I gave mine to a young family that was looking for some glasses. They wanted their kids to see it, and I wanted them to see it too. 

I have some great guys from Wisconsin here for the next three days to fish with me. We will do walleye and perch, but we'll never know at any given time what we'll be fishing for, because they just want to have a good time and catch whatever is biting.   

Tomorrow's weather looks kind of iffy, so we'll be checking that out at breakfast. The winds might keep us off the lake, or at the very least, limit us to where we can go on the lake.  We shall see....

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls