Home at last ! After running my last trip at the western basin on Sunday May the 30th and capturing 35 Walleyes for my 6 guests, I jumped right back in the boat and brought it across the lake under table top flat conditions and after a 5 1/2 hour gas guzzling trip, pulled into Ashtabula Harbor at 8:15 in the evening for the remainder of the season. And like Dorothy said, "there is no place like home" ! It really does feel good to be back on my home turf again. Excited by rumors of some pretty good Walleye being caught back here already, I only had to wait one day to get back out there and go to work. Ashtabula did not disappoint...
Starting with Tuesday I had a group of three come in for a 3 day trip from Maryland. What a welcome way to break into my Ashtabula trips with a smaller group knowing that we were going to have to do some searching and figuring out of things. Lawrence who's been coming for about 20 years now and always takes my earliest first available back home here gets even more excited then I do I think at the prospects of hunting down the first big loads of the year aboard "The Trophy" out east. Somehow we always pull it off. They were rewarded with 51 nice Walleyes for their 3 day outing taking home a hundred plus pounds of pure boneless skinless fillets ! Not too shabby ! The program was pretty typical for the early Ashtabula fish. Jet Divers and little Scorpion spoons off the big planer boards and the slightly larger Savant Spoons off of the big Dipseys fished close to shore. A fun filled 3 day outing for all involved, including myself.
My good luck continued on Saturday when I had yet again another 3 man charter show up and once again the fishing was very good for us aboard "The Trophy" with easy limits of Walleyes captured before noon time. We didn't even have to burn a lot of gas either for a change. Just turn the corner at the light house and start setting lines. My goodness how I would love to be able to do that all summer. We all know that I won't. Sunday it was back to reality and a harsh one at that as we were met dockside 5:00 in the morning with 30 mph winds, rain and lightning. After listening to the National Weather Service's marine forecast and watching the storm tracks on my live satellite weather feed, it did not take us long to figure out that we weren't going anywhere. At least not by boat. A crappy ending to a pretty good week. So week one back in Ashtabula for me is in the books and it looks like it's going to be a better summer then last year at this point but still Mother Nature keeps showing us who is ultimately the boss. Such is the nature of this business.
Today's bad weather looks to be short lived however with winds supposedly backing off for the beginning of the new fishing week. I have one open date this week for a spur of the moment trip. This Tuesday, June the 8th. Anyone interested can call me as late as the night before and we can do it. I am always on call and available if the date is not taken. Tuesdays weather is calling for sunny conditions and waves 2 foot or less. Perfect. Anyway, as always I can be reached on my boat/ mobile line that is on 24/7 and that number is 216-387-2656. One quick note for all of my upcoming guests. Fishing licenses are not available this year at my marina so everyone who is going to need one is going to have to get them either online ahead of time or hit a K-Mart or Wal-Mart just before your trip. The K-Mart here in town is open all night but I would recommend just getting them online in advance. Links can be found easily thru out my website www.trophycharters.com Well that's it for this week. I should have lots of things to report on next week. Stay tuned...
Capt. Walt
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