OK ok, enough rambling I know. So here’s the meat and potatoes!
This week we focused on trolling on every day we were able to get out. I think jigs are defiantly on the early end of things but they will be picking up in the next week with the warm weather we have been having (we got up to the 70’s today). Those fish are ready to go we just need the water to come up a few more degrees. I have heard from a few sources that today they started to find small pockets of spawning walleye that were active and able to catch them jigging. The best is yet to come!
As far as trolling, late last week we had a really strong storm that muddied up the entire western basin and most of the way to Cleveland. It was still pretty rough Saturday morning and we opted to drag our feet and come out in the afternoon. Despite the muddy water we found a nice pocket of fishable water on the east side of Kellys. If you have been following along with us this is an area we have been fishing for a couple weeks now. These are a very nice grade of fish with average size ranging in the 24-28” class. Some larger ones are mixed in there as well. We have been targeting 42-45’ of water out there and on Saturday the fish were actually pretty high in the water column. We were targeting the 20-28’ range and they were feeding hard. We opted for bandits and definitely did the damage for us. Best leads were 30/30, 40/40 50/50 with a few coming on unassisted 120 back. It wasn’t long before we had all of our fish and off to the ramp we went!
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we had strong SW winds that kept a lot of anglers shore side. I knew we were going to get beat up pretty good if we went back to the Kellys area so we opted to head east to Huron. I haven’t been out of Huron, Ohio in a little over a week so we spent the next hour or so graphing various areas and trying to find some fish that were closer to shore to
target. Luckily, after doing some looking we found the river was putting some nice brown water out that was heading east. This proved to be holding fish. I found targeting the transition lines to be the most productive. The program was much the same, we found fish a bit shallower in the 35-37’ range and we targeted them with bandits. I did note that the fish hawk was 8 degrees warmer out of huron than it was on the island chain. As a result these fish were quite a bit more active and fought a lot more!
The next three days we were able to work in the same area other than making minor changes to follow the transition lines in the water. The currents and winds were moving them everyday. Once we found the right water each day, It didn’t take us long to put a program together each day!
Top producing colors for us the last three days were Purple demon ( this is a purple bodied Bandit with a chartreuse head) the second is a custom Bandit that I do not know the name of, but its body is hot pink with a black head on it. I honestly couldn’t even tell you who painted it as I have had them for years and I'm glad I bought 20 of them when I did as I haven’t seen them since lol.
Key take-aways, 1) trust your electronics. Do not be afraid to spend some time graphing when you show up to a new area to get your bearings. You guys spend a lot of money on your electronics, spend some time learning how to interpret the information they are giving you. 2) look for the right walleye colored water, this takes some time to learn what to look for but it will be very beneficial once you recognize it.
Remember, everyday is a good day to go fishing….you just need to roll with the punches and do the best that you can!
See you out there!
Captain Matt
