Willard Mother’s Day Fishing

[ZUKI_BLUE]

Hi all, Well I never thought I would be fishing on Mother’s Day but my wonderful wife suggested we do so and so we headed out about 11:30. The first order of the afternoon was to find the island. If you have a hummingbird with GPS and you ever run across the term format, don’t say yes. Just like that I lost all my GPS waypoint locations collected for over four years. You say, shouldn’t be a problem, that’s what I thought too. It is 1.1 miles straight out the South marina channel and just a little to the right. Right ... after about 45 minutes doing huge S’s,M’s,Z’s, I still did not run across that shallow water. Thankfully another one of you fisherman came out to check out the island, only one this whole time. I immediately started heading in his direction. He was too far away to talk to, but I figured he must know where the island is, everybody does. It turns out he did but before I got there I saw some fishy marks that looked like they belonged to walleyes. we began our crawler harness thing, Praying they were biters. Turns out they were and between 2 and 3 we boated 4 eyes and a catfish. Then the slight breeze stopped and the bugs came hard. My wife who suggested we come fishing nicely said it was time to leave and we did. Now for the good stuff. Turns out we were a little south east of the island working right up to the edge of the island. Tthe biters were in 20 feet of water. when we fish this way we have two harnesses under the boat and two jigs dragging behind the boat out 100 feet or so. Caught two eyes each way, which was no surprise to us and then caught the catfish on a trailing twister tail also .20 feet of water, Blue and chartreuse, go figure. I marked each fish caught ,at the end of the day all 4 eyes were caught in almost the same spot. I find this happens quite frequently. I have seen this time and time again where if you can catch one walleye and you circle back you can keep on catching. At least it seems it does for us. Kind of new to posting but if I can figure it out I’ll include a picture. Hope this helps.
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[ZUKI_BLUE]

Trying to post a picture
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[dubob]

[size 4][font "Comic Sans MS"][#800000]This time of year, I start fishing right at the bouys out of the South Marina and fish directly at the island. If that doesn't produce, I go past the island and then head straight for the light pole at the northwest corner. Harnesses bottom bounced and curly tails off the planer boards are my go to's most of the time. Will be out there this afternoon if the wind cooperates. What was your speed? I'm partial to running about 0.5 to 0.7 using just the electric.[/#][/font][/size]
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[doitall5000]

It looks like the eyes are going to be a good size this year. The ones I've caught are about 20 inches. That's good fish for eating.
Thanks for your great report.
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[wiperhunter2]

Nice catch Gene, awful nice of your wife to want to go fishing on her day., sounds like you have keeper there[].
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[SkunkedAgain]

Hey great post and nice to see a good report from the bay.. Thanks J
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[Tin-Can]

Nice going Gene. Glad to see you back on the water. Sorry about losing all your GPS data. If you come out the south marina and make a slight angle north-west (thats to the left) and keep an eye on your sonar, you will see the edge of the island start to incline up. [] [fishon]
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[ZUKI_BLUE]

Thanks to all for your added insights. It is really fun fishing with you all. I was out there today Again. Went to yesterdays way points and not a fishy mark to be had anywhere. Struggled all day, but managed to avoid the skunk in the bottom of the 9th. Never had a bite on the harness. The one was caught on the twister dragging out back. I’ve been trolling about 1 to 1.2. If you see me, give a shout. I have about the only Suzuki motor on the lake , mounted to a blue/tan Lund walkthrough with a tan canopy. That’s why my nick name is ZUKI_BLUE
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