AUGUST 18th, 2010
Yesterday I fished with Tim and Cindy from the Monroe area of lower Michigan and Tom Janks from right here in Rapid River. We left the Gladstone Yacht Harbor around 6:30 a.m. and headed out to troll harnesses behind bottom bouncers. I left a pretty good slug of fish on Sunday and figured they'd be in the same area. Boy was I wrong! We fished for three hours with only one keeper and a few undersized fish. We then put the trolling gear away, and ventured to a weedbed that's been getting pounded by the wind the last few days and got out the drifting rods. In the next hour and a half we put 13 more fish in the boat. The quality of fish was awesome, with all but 4 fish being 18 to 22 1/2 inches. I love drifting with floating jig heads tipped with 1/2 crawlers, it's probably my 2nd most favorite way to fish for walleyes. Jigging is my favorite! It was a little windy to start the day, but by the time we got back to the dock around noon it was beautiful out there. It sure pays to be versatile when fishing. The water temperature dropped 7 degrees since Sunday's major cold front and I thought the bite might be tough, but by slowing down and putting something right in their face, we ended up having a pretty decent trip.
19th, 2010
Another great 5 hr. trip this morning for me and my guests. Longtime client Dale DeWildt came back up from Appleton and brought his friend Paul to get in on the fun. We waited a little while for the rain to move out and then hit the water around 7 a.m.. It was pretty rough this morning, and we had to use both 60 inch drift socks to slow us down while drifting with floating jig heads tipped with crawler halves. Paul had never fished that way for walleyes before, but he soon got the hang of it and ended up having the hot hand at putting fish in the boat. Dale finally caught up and started catching some nice fish too. Me on the other hand...well, I was doing a great job at losing fish today. I just told the guys I was being nice and didn't want to show them up! With all the fish that came off today, we should have had over 20 keepers. We ended up landing 13 walleye while drifting but then lost our wind. We made one short trolling pass the last 1/2 hr. with bottom bouncers and harnesses and picked up our last two fish and headed in.
Captain Ken Lee
www.baydenoccharters.net
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