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Perch and Walleye Fishing with John and John 9/22/15
After breakfast at Big Boppers, and running to Bayview to get Emerald Shiners for the perch part of the trip today, I met my crew over at Mazurik's at 7am.
John Nash and his friend, John, would be fishing for perch and walleye today. We launched and headed out to the 34/36 line to begin the day with some perch fishing. I have learned that when the walleye bite is slow, it's best to go try it AFTER you have a cooler full of perch! It's easier to not watch the boards go back when there is already a good bunch of fish fry meals sitting on ice. Ha!
Anyway, after a failed perch trip on another boat yesterday, that I was first mating on, I knew it might be really tough, but I was hopeful my gold and green little friends would be where I left them last....thankfully, they were.
It took about 20 minutes of nibbles and misses to get something going, but eventually, my crew got the hang of keeping the bait down in the mud, with a taught line. We were using the new "Skipper 9" rigs that James Allen (he makes them) sent me the other day. I really like these little rigs, because I have always been a big fan of the crappie rig style over the spreaders. These rigs keep all three minnows close to the bottom without tangling.
Anyway, it wasn't a crazy fast bite, but it was fast enough to keep everyone entertained and interested. The grade of fish was decent too. We were pulling 8-11 inch fish on average, with some smaller ones that had to go back.
We caught a lot, and I mean A LOT of little baby first year walleye out there too, so it was nice to see that. I'm just giddy with what the future of this fishery holds for those who will be here fishing in the next 10 years to come!
John did catch a nice fat 19 inch walleye too.
I didn't have my perch counter with me today, because we were going to be walleye fishing too, and if we were to get lucky and find some big fish, then I needed my bigger cooler on board. So, I did the perch counting the old fashioned way, with the clicker thingy. But, when I use that, I am guaranteed to miscount them, because I'll forget to click it, or I'll think I didn't click it, and click it again, when in reality, I had already clicked it.
So, I always get close to the count and then count them all by hand again. Well, when I did that today, I found that our "60 perch" were actually only 58 perch. We had two more to catch.
Just as we got back to fishing for those last two again, John N said, "Do we need to move for that big freighter"? I turned to look at what he was talking about and found a big freighter was indeed coming in our direction, and wasn't that far away. I never saw it! My bad....
It wasn't close enough to cause too much concern, and looked like it might go to the south of us, but because it was an empty freighter being pushed by a tug boat, I thought it was best to get out of its way, in case it changed course slightly to port, because then we would have been in trouble.
So, we finished up the perch with a 58 count. On to walleye fishing.
I haven't walleye fished in weeks, due to all the perch trips, but I knew there were still marks down at the 29/35, so we headed there and set up. John and John had never pulled Off Shore inline planer boards before, so it was a learning experience for them. I showed them the first set up with the 3oz snap weight, and then the board, and had them do the rest of the lines. They got the hang of it pretty quickly.
We ran Bandits 30/30 and 30/45 with 3oz snapweights at 1.9-2.0 mph. We also ran two dipsies on the 3 setting at 37 back with big spoons (Pooh Bear chartreuse). We picked up two small walleye on the Bandits (black/gold and Parrot), of which, one was a throw back. We also had one "bigger small one" on the spoon.
Lake conditions were beautiful. There were some residual rollers coming in from the east after yesterday's rough water, but it laid down nicely in the afternoon. There was a slight, and I mean very slight breeze from the SW, and the sun was shining.
They opted to make the 10 hour trip an 8 hour trip today, and make tomorrow's perch and walleye trip up to Canada a 10 hour trip.
We will be heading to the dumping grounds up there to the east of the Helipad, to try our luck, and then we'll search for some walleye on the return from up there.
Tomorrow's weather looks to be even better than it was today, so no one can ask for more than that! :)
Stay tuned....
Capt Juls
