Willard 5/14/16

[Kent]

I might as well add another Willard Report. Kory and I were waiting at the south gate when it opened this morning at 6:00. I wish there was a way to skip the first boating trip of the year and just start with the second trip, but alas, I don't quite know how to do that. First challenge was finding a dead starter battery. This was especially frustrating because I charged it recently. Grabbed mynew jumper battery and hooked it up to the dead battery and nothing happened. A nice guy dropped Kory off at the boat, in the middle of the marina, and Kory noticed that the jumper battery had a switch on it. That immediately solved the problem and we were good to go.

Headed out a little ways to hopefully charge the battery so it would start later (didn't charge it enough) and get ready to troll. Of course, the trolling motor was extremely difficult to start and keep running but we finally got it going, and it run perfectly from then on. Kory quickly caught a walleye and I caught two smaller wipers and that was that.

Moved over to shallower water and started dragging mussels. Didn't have to drift far to find a nice school of wipers. Hit spot lock and commenced to catching and missing fish. First time I have fished with mussels and it reminds me of fishing with Jello, except that I believe Jello would stay on better. We didn't have any problem keeping it on when we cast, but the wipers sure seemed to be masters at getting it off of the treble hooks without getting hooked. We caught fish steadily until about noon and then it suddenly died.

Fun trip and always great to fish with Kory.
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[Fishin_dad]

We were out there today too. Trolled over by freeway bay and didn't catch anything. Moved over to the west side. Wow, I didn't realize Willard was so big until I tried to get to the other side. Once we got over there we quickly caught our first wiper and then my parents called and said they decided to come with us. So we pulled in our lines and went back to the north Marina. My kids were happy to have grandma and grandpa with them. We trolled over by the marina again but didn't catch anything so we went back to the far side of the lake. It wasn't hot, but we did okay. Everyone in the boat pulled in a fish. For my mom it was her first fish in probably 30 years, (not counting going to the fish farm in Ogden) maybe more. For my dad it was his first fish ever. When my younger son realized that it was grandpas first fish ever he looked at me and said, "but dad, who taught you to fish then if it wasn't grandpa?" Thank heavens for fishing buddies when I was younger to get me addicted.
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[ekimjack]

We trolled today with our usual cranks. Managed two decent wipers in three hours.[fishon]
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[HD7000]

You may have seen us out there in the West end... It sure wasn't hot fishing but we did manage 10 wiper and one nice walleye. We were in the larger duckboat a couple hundred yards off the West dike...
Freeway bay was on fire before that wind storm a couple weeks ago, but it's been hard to find fish ever since.
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