I went up to Erie to do a little pre-fishing and although we jumped around to different way points and tried to shake fish off. We still managed to hook a couple. A 4.9 and a 3. I am pretty confident they will be there next week and bigger.  But here they are and a little video of us running in 1 to 3 footers. sorry about the video quality the software I have sucks.

Nice fish and cool video.

I cannot wait to get back up there...Its such a unique fishery.

Yeha I have a tourney there AUGUST 2nd . I wanted to make sure smallies were there. We were actualy using tube hooks with the points and barbs cut off. I learned my lesson in stickin my tourney fish. I know they are there now lets hope the weather cooperates! I have a 25 mile run on the big lake. I know closes spots but they don't quite have the quality fish.

Hey man, good luck.  I don't doubt you know what you are doing in the least.  I cannot even imagine a 25 mile run.  The farthest I have ever ran was like 7 miles or something.

Hey Tom thanks BUT, the tourney didn't exactly go as planned. What I guessed to be a 25 mile run was actually 36, the 1 to 3 foot wave forecast turned out to be 3 to 5 footers, the wind that was supposed to come from the northwest at 5 to 10 knots came out of the northeast at 10 to 20 knots, and my hat blew off before we even got out of Sandusky bay. We made the run anyway and was confident, I have won alot of money from the area and when we got there It was pleasant for about a half hour then the wind picked up and started blowing us really fast even with two drift socks. I hooked up and started crankin one in and my tube came flying out of the front of a wave, not even 30 seconds later my co-angler was taking a whizz and his rod loaded up and he had to almost go in the water after it, that ened up in a 5+ rocketing out of the water and throwing his bait. I felt really bad because he actually saw the size of that one and said it would have been his smallie pb. After that it just got worse weatherwise so we left and tried to salvage the remainder of the day with a couple back up spots around the islands I fished a couple of hours and caught some smaller fish the day before. Well if It had been a sheephead tourney I would have been o.k. but it wasn't. The bad part besides all that and me and my boat taking a real beating was, it was only 22 pounds to win and 17 for second. Many stayed in Sandusky and scratched out a largemouth or two. I thought go big or go home and unfortunataly went home beat up and fishless. I guess that was just the way it is. I was on a roll for a few tourneys and just happened to stop rolling there. Oh well on to the next one, hopefully with better results!