July ! Wow is summer starting to slip away. But in it's wake, "The Trophy" continues to crank out wonderful memories this summer. This springs poor weather and all of its tough fishing seems to be eons ago as we are now consistently having good day after good day. And this whole past week was no exception with limit or near limit catches of huge Walleyes being caught everyday. Young 9 year old Jaedon Bruce of Windsor Heights, Iowa accompanied by his grandpa summed it up best when he hand delivered a note to me on their final day after a multi day trip. It read: Capt. Walt, Thank you for taking me fishing. I had a great time and I will NEVER forget "The Trophy" ! Your fishing Buddy, Jaedon. Wonderful memories indeed !
I think it was last week that I had mentioned that there has hardly been any real boat pressure out there yet this summer at all. Well that all changed dramatically this past week and in particular with the 4th of July weekend which just happened to correspond with some real stunning picture perfect summer like weather. Geeze did they ever come out of the woodwork. There seemed to be boats everywhere you looked ! But fortunately we did not encounter any real issues with most everyone being rather respectful it seemed. It helps though that anymore I just assume the worst of everyone and just go into evasive course corrections anytime it looks questionable. It just is not worth the risk of getting into a bad situation while trolling with both boats thinking that they are in the right. Hopefully the traffic will ease again once we put this holiday behind us.
The Walleyes continue to creep further and further out with each passing day now. They certainly are also dropping down deeper and deeper into the water column and the successful boats have made all of the necessary adjustments. And as we meander further out all the time now we are also running into more and more steelheads with multiple hook ups over the stretch of the day not uncommon now. Getting any of them to the boat is another story ! Lol ! Boy did I see some acrobatics this past week as these silver bullets did everything that they could to shake the hooks from their jaws. A lot of them did although we still managed to land a handful. The junk fish have not been too bad here as of late either. Although I probably just jinxed myself for next week just like I did the week before by talking about "no boat traffic" ! Lol !
So by the time I post the new report next week, we'll have about half of the season in the books already. My days now seem to be just a continuous blur. Early to bed,early to rise. fish hard... rinse and repeat. just like the movie Ground Hog Day. Over and over and over again. I am beginning to feel just a bit worn down as going every day and netting this many big fish each day is starting to take a toll on my body. It is physically exhausting swinging my super long and over size nets out as far as I can reach and scooping up 8, 9, 10 pound Walleye after Walleye. I'm not going to complain too much though as it beats the heck out of not doing any netting at all. I keep hoping for a crop of younger fish to show up into the mix but so far this summer it's been big or nothing. Doesn't bode well for the upcoming years but I guess we'll deal with that when we cross that road. But for now we'll just keep cranking out the good memories and the sore shoulders !
Capt. Walt
*It is imperative that we get out early. These fish most of the time feed like crazy right at dawn and then really shut down when the sun gets higher. I am at the boat at 5:00am everyday and we need to be off the dock by 5:30am at the VERY LATEST ! For all of my upcoming trips, I urge you to be there as early as possible so we don't miss out on this opportunity. Also there are no fishing license sales at the marina again this summer so you guys have to get them on your own ahead of time. You can do so online or the local K-Mart or Wal-Mart here in Ashtabula which both are open 24 hours a day.
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