Weekend Perch Between A and B Can

We took a couple of new perch fishermen and their 3 boys (12,8 and 6) out on Saturday morning between A and B cans.

There were big packs of boats to the north and east of us. We chose this spot because of marks as well as after watching the radar throughout the night, storms seem to have been moving around this area.

We were using pin shiners from Happy Hooker (with some goldies mixed in). Left out of Fenwick at 7:30.

Spreaders on the bottom, could not keep minnows on the hooks. Kids were losing bait within 20 seconds after hitting the bottom. I was designated baiter for the boys to try to give them a great fishing experience.

After 20 minutes, 3 dozen minnow and no fish, I grabbed a pole to figure out what was going on. The fish were in the mud and hitting short and quick. After 4 times of rebaiting, I finally pulled up a 4 inch whitey. Dropped again, pulled up another. Next drop, I found a double header on the bottom of the target species this time.

I ended up having to double hook the minnows (through the eyes, then the tail) to give the kids a fighting chance of pulling up some perch. The perch didn't have much size (between 6 and 9 inch fish), but we managed to pull in 62 perch before the 15 degree immediate drop in air temperature....Time to go!! We fished for about 2 hours. The two adults caught on to perching techniques and put a majority of the fish in the cooler. We thru back about 2 dozen 5 inch perch and a handful of 7 inch walleye. Probably caught a dozen small whites and 2 sheephead.

It was certainly up and down perching. We did better on number 6 hooks than anything. We experimented with different hooks and different minnow baiting. Bigger minnow were virtually non effective. Cut Bait only yielded a few (although we didn't lose it). Crawlers even worked if you left an inch of tail hanging off the end of the unexposed hook.

The kids had fun but wished they could have caught more. It kept their interest and created lifelong memories for them.

A couple of experienced perchers could have easily limited out in less than and hour. We could have filled all of our limits if the storms weren't moving around so much. Lake Erie doesn't give many warnings, but when it does, listen to it!! There were quite a few soaked fishermen coming in after us. There was a bit of lightening and wind started picking up after a quick change. Don't take chances out there. Count your fish and your blessings and make it out on the boat another day.