Sleep deprived man takes a kid fishing....

Made plans to take Cliff to Erie for the first time this year. And for the first time, I/we actually made it to the lake when I have wanted to, right at sunup it was awesome.
The day started out decent, the waves were a little bigger than I thought they were supposed to be but it didn't delay our start.
We started where I was last week when I caught my limit out by the armada. When we got out there of course there were only a couple boats off in the distance. So it was still a crapshoot, the charters don't start 'til later in the day and it looked like everyone else slept in.
Anywho, as I was getting us rigged up to start the troll, Cliff was doing his best to ask 101 questions so he could help. He's a good helper, but it was easier for me to just get things set up and get the day started. So, once I got the boat going and we were on the troll this happened.

how do I hold it?

Like this...

image for demonstrational purposes only

The next fish was pulling hard so I gave it to Cliff, while he was fighting that one, one of our other rods fired. I grabbed that one and fought my fish to the boat only to have him throw the hook boat side. I almost started crying, it was a really nice walleye, when I looked to see how cliff was doing he almost had his fish to the boat and when I looked back I noticed he also had all of our other lines tangled with the GOO he was bringing in.
Well, if all went as planned irritability would've been at a minimum but that's just never the case. Once I was able to unhook the goo and assess the situation I came to the conclusion, "Well, we're done for the day". The rat's nest was unparalleled in all my years fishing, WOW what a friggin' mess except I didn't say friggin' alot. After a 10-minute expletive fest and anger release, I grabbed a casting rod that I bring with, rigged it, handed it to Cliff so he could fish. I got to work on trying to salvage our day. I would say around 20 minutes later after a little alot more cussing, I had untangled the whole mess and the only line I lost was the knots on the swivels, I was able to save everything. 👍👌👌👍👏👏👏👏
Since everything was in the boat already and the wind had pushed us almost the entirety of our troll we cranked up the big motor and headed back upwind to start the troll again. It was like we started anew, and the boat was a happier place once this started happening on a constant basis.

#only net the big ones

When we started loading the cooler the day got alot better, the wind also started dying down which really slicked out the water. Not really great for catching walleye, we definitely caught most of our fish when it was a little rougher, but we still didn't go long without catching. Then of course there was the byproduct fish, which we didn't catch too many of on this trip.

if you hold out your arms the fish looks huge 😁

Not a whole lot of shorts either, the bonus was the 22"ers we were hooking, they fought so hard I thought they were goo's until they got boat side.
We didn't manage anything this big...

which we would've released anyway, but we caught some quality fish.
After our limit was met we shed some clothes and went for a swim, the water was awesome. 70+ degrees with some cool spots felt really good on the warm mainly windless day. When we got done swimming, we broke down the boat and headed for the launch.

Next time I'll put my shorts back on... no one wants to see that.

It ended up being a super great day, I had the privilege to spend with a good friend.