Some friends did catch fish today. Sounded like it was almost totally a meat bite and all of them came west of Middle Island. I don't have numbers but Lazyeye, Buck and Cap'n Shaggy had decent days.
Hey SkipnSkul! Is this better?
May 10th: Went fishing with Charlie Chesnut, AKA Shadetree on his boat. We were in a small union tourney and fished the area west of Middle Island. It was a beatiful day overall but we had to wait til after 8AM to launch do to some pretty severe lightning storms to roll through. We managed 4 decent fish but couldn't get the other 2 we needed and pushed the time too much which made Charlie late for measuring the fish. I got some pics this time and 2 of them were pretty big but we didn't weigh or measure them. I had a great time, Charlie is a great story teller and a pretty good fisherman as well. Pics here
May 17th: Chris and I went perching at Vermilion. We lucked out and sat down right on them about 1/2 mile east of the pack of perchers. She whooped me today. We had several over 12" but no FO's, most were 9-10" and a couple 8's wound up in the box from being deep hooked. Pics When we got done we tried for walleye but the waves got nasty and we called it a day without catching any after about a 1/2 hour. 16 trips
May 19 PM-20AM: Went out of Cranberry for our first night trip of the year with Chris. Got out around 8 PM and we planned on fishing shallow but heard some good activity on the radio from Woody and a couple others so fished in deeper water. It was a mistake trying to catch someone else's fish as we didn't do well until we headed back into shallow water and finally got them going at about 11 PM. Best lures were Green Perch Ripsticks and light brown DJ Thundersticks 40 and 20 back respectively.The fish we got were nice long fish but they looked skinny compared to what we were used to catching. We also got a FO Sheepshead and Smallmouth. Pics here! The 20th is Chris's birthday, I hope she had a good time in spite of losing a few fish and losing a little more ground in our annual total fish caught numbers game. Happy Birthday Chris! 17 trips
May 24-25-26: Chris and I went to Pelee and got our Canadian license on Saturday and then fished Canadian waters Saturday and Sunday looking for big fish to maybe help out a couple RCL buddies. We did find some nice fish and turned the numbers over to Christian who came in on Sunday and Monday and turned over some really decent tourney fish. Patterns were the same as all year long. Meat, cranks and spoons all worked all weekend but most of the fish we pulled came from the bottom regardless of depth. I'll give more details as to location after the RCL is over on the Canadian bite.
Monday (Memorial Day) we went to Huron and fished the Ruggles area. Fish are stacked up in the area north of Cranberry in 30 feet and deeper but we could not get them to go. We wound up getting our fish in 18-24 feet of water towards evening. nothing big but they were all nice 22-25" fish. Again there was no pattern, fish came on meat, cranks and spoons but they did seem to prefer bright colors like Mixed Veggie and Chris's new favorite Reefrunner "Trick or Treat". All in all it was a pretty successful weekend and if the weather ever stabilizes it should continue. One thing I did notice was that the fish seem skinnier than last year and this spring. I'm thinking that the bait has been dispersed widely and they haven't been eating as well as in the past either because of that or because of all the fronts that have beenn going through the last several months. 20 trips