COVID has messed up a lot of things for most of us. We had two weeks of Lake Erie fishing scheduled last year and had to move to 2021 when Ohio shut down out of towners coming in to fish. Fortunately, Mark Cahlik at Bays Edge allowed us to move our deposits from 2019 to a two week stay this year. Our first week saw brothers Dave and Larry Nichols along with Dan Goiffon and his nephew, Jake Wolfe, join me at the condo. Dave brought his Lund boat while I had Dan and Jake in my Ranger 620. The weather the first two days was extremely warm and allowed me to put the Bimini Top on the Ranger while Dave and Larry toughed it out. We had little wind so we could run from Mazurik’s boat ramp out to the northeast side of Kelly’s Island for our fishing my first week there. Jake caught a huge catfish which took about 30 minutes to land with expert coaching from his Uncle Dan! He also caught his biggest walleye! Dan and I let Jake reel all the fish in during the week. Bandits and Rapala Husky Jerks both non jointed and jointed were our ticket to catch fish. Dave ran his Husky’s. We had one “blow” day on Wednesday so it was off to all the area bait shops for tackle shopping: I believe Jake collected a few Bandits for his collection back home in Minnesota! We had a nice lunch at Crabby Joe’s which was our only meal out during the week. Everyone left on Friday, the third, for home while Tracy Hayward and Steve Schaefer drove over to join me. Steve lives in South Dakota and fishes the Missouri River out of Chamberlain. The three of us put the Ranger in the water on the 4th while Justin Vogt and his friend, Steve Landon, drove over from Wisconsin. Justin has a very nice 2021 Ranger 620–it’s a pretty blue and he calls it his “battleship”! We had a very difficult week fishing. Way to much wind every day with one day we took off to rest up and shop. We had a nice meal at the condo prepared by Tracy and Steve L. one night we shared with local guide Julia (Juls) Davis and her good friend and fellow guide, Jenn Wieland. We drove over to Huron one day and fished north by the dumping ground and just east and caught some really nice fish. We never made it back to Huron but we did troll all the way from Kelly’s over and through the dumping ground near the end of our windy week. Our daily numbers of fish caught weren’t as good the second week as the first week for me. I’m thankful Justin and I had our Rangers with Airwave Pedestals to help soften the Lake Erie bumps and rollers! We all left the condo and headed home on the 11th listening to coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attack on our Country reflecting on the past 20 years. #neverforget. For me, I dropped the Ranger off at our boat condo and came home to watch the Iowa/Iowa State game on television while we babysat our granddaughter, Andrina, so her Mom could go to the game and her Dad could work. I’ve fished Lake Erie many years and can tell you these two weeks made up for the many unbelievable big fish days we had in the past–just the time of season? Oh, Bandits ruled our second week in the tropical custom colors shared with Justin. My boat had better success with bright colored Bandit Generators. We used 2 ounce snap weights at 50 feet of line out then ran additional line to get to the depths where the Lowrance showed the marks, mostly 25 feet and down. The Precision Trolling app is a wonderful tool to help you dial in just where your baits are running! We thank Shannon, Misty, and Mark at Bays Edge for the fine lodging and fish cleaning facilities. So, I’m traveling over to Bob’s Marine in Bellevue, IA, Tuesday to have my Minnkota Ulterra repaired: the belt which controls the unit broke while out on the water. Ask me sometime what it was like to follow the instructions to manually retrieve and stow the unit!! Tracy and I head back out to LE in October for the NPAA meeting in Sandusky and hopefully, another week of fishing with Bays Edge as our home base. Thank you to my pals for their help and time on the water over the two weeks. Hope you enjoy reading this report and looking at the pics while I thank Mike G. for posting! Fish on!! Spike