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April 4th: This was one of the most miserable trips I ever had. Steady hard rain, brisk winds, 3-5 foot waves and just above freezing. Lost my GPS (X15), cell phone and radio to moisture plus we caught no fish. I took GFO member Fishpro (Paul Smith) with me and I think he has a new respect for Lake Erie and good rain gear. Better luck next time Paul! Update: Got my X15 working again, so now I'm just down a radio and Cell phone

April 6th: WWA tourney at Catawba State Park. What a bust! 5 fish were caught total by 12 teams that braved the very cold weather. 22 degrees at launch time after 2 1/2 days of nasty wind. 1st place weighed in a whopping 7 pounds of fish. Chris had 1 good pullback on a Reefrunner and I had 2 pulls on a weight forward spinner  (My hands were too cold to mess with harnesses) on lead core on the bottom. That was it all day long. Got a couple pics of ice covered Chris and boat. They are here. Next up is concentrated fishing for the PWT on the 16th. I'll be posting results but not details until the PWT is over.

April 11th: Catawba PWT prefishing and scouting. The water is mostly dirty and 36 degrees when I leave in the morning. By afternoon there is a gradual warming that puts most water in the 39 degree range but I did find some 42 degree water at West Sister but it was loaded with debris (logs, barrels,etc.), this must be the Maumee current. Got 1 BIG fish trolling and 2 small ones jigging.

April 12th: Mazurik prefishing with Chris. We got skunked with no pull backs. Pounded the Marblehead area, North Bass area(east and west). Very clear water was at the west end of the Rattles. We could see the bottom in 30' of water. We also fished the Green Island area.

April 13th: Mazurik prefishing with Chris. We worked the Marblehead area again and only got one fish. This area is literally stacked with fish. The water is clean to stained but very cold.

April 14th: Prefished with Perry Heath from Ashtabula. Great guy and he picked up the basic trolling tecniques really quickly! We tried the traditional Can areas for big fish but even though we had several hookups we never got any big ones in the boat. We then moved to Locust reef and trolled Husky jerks and ripsticks over the reef top. That worked out well and turned into my pattern for the tourney. We lost a lot of fish and the ones we caught were just barely hooked but we did manage 4 in the boat. Pics

April 15th: Prefished with Perry again. This time in the Marblehead area and Gem Beach areas. Those fish would just not go even though they were stacked up better than any place else I had been. We had one pullback at Gem beach but lost it before we saw it!

April 16th- 18th PWT: I drew Chris Bak from Indiana for a partner on day 1 and Brian Killenbeck from Michigan on Day 3. Both these guys were great and had a lot to do with me being able to get a check at the end of the tourney. Fishing was tough in open water for the big females so we concentrated on just getting some weight on Locust reef. Wednesday we lost more fish than we got in the boat with several of them being very big. We went through a long dry spell on the reef that in hindsite means we should have left earlier to try for the big ones at the can lines. We did get 1 big fish at C can late in the day that turned into a Chinese fire drill. The line broke between the board and rod and when we went back against the waves to get it found a fish still on it. While handlining it in it went under the boat into the motors and transducer wires an even though I could see it we couldn't net it.  We finally managed to get it loose and netted but used up a lot of adrenaline in the process. 21 pounds on Day 1 and 52nd place!  Pics
     On Day 3, I decided to fish the reef again but limit the time to 10:30 AM. Hindsite again says I made the wrong decision as after catching 11 pounds and 4 fish on 4 bites there we moved to deeper water and never had a pullback or fish the rest of the day. It turn out that Brian and I had fished the RCL with a common Pro angler and we had lots of common complaints about this guy. We had a lot of fun just shooting the breeze and enjoying 2 great days on the water. Pics 11 fishing trips so far this year!

April 26th-27th: The 26th was ugly. 4 foot ugly waves with no pattern. Chris and I could only fish til 2 PM and decided to try and find some fish around Huron for the WWA tourney on Sunday. We knew that fish were being caught north of Kelleys but decided to try and shorten our run. It didn't work and we got beat up for nothing. We did have a good time going to eat at Berardi's with 4 of the other WWA teams Saturday night though. The 27th was a beautiful day and we made a near WOT run about 18 miles to just west of Gull shoal. There weren't many boats there when we arrived but that changed pretty quickly and the fish were biting for everyone but us until Chris finally pulled one on a Flippin Harness 75 feet back. I got one shortly after on a Fried Chicken Reefrunner and then it got slow again. Through a lot of experimentation we finally got something going with weight forward spinners. I was running a 3/8 ounce weight forward almost 300 feet behind the board and Chris was running a 3/4 ounce about 75' back and we finally startd picking at them on a fairly regular basis. Ended up with 7 fish and 33 pounds but it wasn't nearly enough as Toolman and Christian got 45 and 43 pounds for 1st and 2nd. We were way back in the field on one of the good days that almost everyone had a banner day. Picture Don't know for sure where we wound up but should have been in 8-10th place.