Long Day Willard Bay

[Paddler]

Launched from the north marina early (for me) in my underpowered Hewes.  Lines in at 6:52, first 'eye in the boat 10 minutes later.  Thought it was going to be a great day.  Wrong.  Struggled all day, multiple lures, mutiple colors.  Midday nothing was happening on SR5s or SR7s, Thin Fin, etc.  Small fish here and there.  I started marking fish near the bottom in 13'-14', so put on a Wally Diver (CD6, purple and pink!) and ran it just off the bottom.  Short time later I thought I'd snagged the bottom, but it was a 22" walleye.  Cool.  Put it back down 75' back, reel goes off.  My spring scale isn't very precise, but it turned out to be a 23", 4.5#(?) wiper.  Probably a PR, but who counts?

I used my drift sock sytem for quite a while today, seems to slow me down to 2.0MPH +/- .2MPH.  Couldn't really discern any significant change with or without, not sure it's worth the trouble.  Saw a red Lund come out of the south marina in the afternoon, wondered if it was Redrebel.  Caught the one wiper, total of 10 walleye, spent 11 hours on the water.  Bugs were bad out west.  Later on it seemed that an SR5 in Holographic Blue Shad seemed to produce better than most.

[Jig-fisher]

Those are a couple of very nice fish. You are right about the bugs on the west side. One of my favorite ways to fish that side is to swing in close to the dike when I'm doing S-curves. The bugs were so bad I didn't dare put my wife through that.

[Redrebel]

Launched from the north marina early (for me) in my underpowered Hewes.  Lines in at 6:52, first 'eye in the boat 10 minutes later.  Thought it was going to be a great day.  Wrong.  Struggled all day, multiple lures, mutiple colors.  Midday nothing was happening on SR5s or SR7s, Thin Fin, etc.  Small fish here and there.  I started marking fish near the bottom in 13'-14', so put on a Wally Diver (CD6, purple and pink!) and ran it just off the bottom.  Short time later I thought I'd snagged the bottom, but it was a 22" walleye.  Cool.  Put it back down 75' back, reel goes off.  My spring scale isn't very precise, but it turned out to be a 23", 4.5#(?) wiper.  Probably a PR, but who counts?

I used my drift sock sytem for quite a while today, seems to slow me down to 2.0MPH +/- .2MPH.  Couldn't really discern any significant change with or without, not sure it's worth the trouble.  Saw a red Lund come out of the south marina in the afternoon, wondered if it was Redrebel.  Caught the one wiper, total of 10 walleye, spent 11 hours on the water.  Bugs were bad out west.  Later on it seemed that an SR5 in Holographic Blue Shad seemed to produce better than most.

I didn’t make it out yesterday. Family did an early Father’s Day for me since one of my boys will be out of town for baseball. I was able to get them to swing by sportsmens to pick up a couple new rods that can handle the planer boards a bit better. 
I do feel you were more successful than you think. 10 walleye and a PR… pretty good in my book. I’m still cleaning bugs out of the Redrebel. Im usually screaming obscenities at them within five minutes of trolling.

[Paddler]

Those are a couple of very nice fish. You are right about the bugs on the west side. One of my favorite ways to fish that side is to swing in close to the dike when I'm doing S-curves. The bugs were so bad I didn't dare put my wife through that.

In retrospect, I spent way too much time out west.  The bugs weren't bad at all on the east side, and I think the water clarity was better, too.  I caught my first fish 0.7 miles out of the north marina and my last couple in the same area.

[Jig-fisher]

Those are a couple of very nice fish. You are right about the bugs on the west side. One of my favorite ways to fish that side is to swing in close to the dike when I'm doing S-curves. The bugs were so bad I didn't dare put my wife through that.

In retrospect, I spent way too much time out west.  The bugs weren't bad at all on the east side, and I think the water clarity was better, too.  I caught my first fish 0.7 miles out of the north marina and my last couple in the same area.

We're all guilty of searching a bit too much. I still do. But I do try to do several passes over areas that I catch fish.  Those 2 eyes we did catch on the west side, I did 2 more passes over that same area before leaving. Likewise in Freeway, kept doing loops through the same areas and kept catching fish.

[Paddler]

This is the Wally Diver they hit.  Nothing on a perch pattern, etc.  Not sure which hatch this matches: