Fishing with Bennett, Glenn and Amy 8/30/17

At 5:30 this morning, I hit Hi Way Bait for some emerald shiners, and started to head back to Catawba to meet my crew at 6:45.
My crew for the day was Bennett Welch, and Glenn and Amy Osowski. Ben had bid on my trip that was donated by Jim Gammons to a Red Cross Charity event held at the Catawba Island Club back in July. He was treating Glenn and Amy to this trip.

When I looked at the weather before I left, there was no rain on the radar, but when some rain drops started to hit my windshield near 163 and 269N, I checked it again. A pop up shower was headed over the lake towards the town, and was going to rain pretty hard, but not for long.

I was a little pissed that my nice clean boat was now getting wet, but it is what it is, and there's nothing to do about it, but dry it off with a towel when it stops.
I was hoping that my crew would have rain gear with them, or they were going to have wet butts. I was worried that they wouldn't, because the forecast wasn't calling for any rain. Thankfully, they did.

We were going to wait for it to completely pass, but it wasn't moving as fast as I thought it was, and I figured if we went over to H Can we would skirt the edge of it. Well, I was close, but we still got rained on. We set up there, but there were few marks on the Helix's screen. I figured we would fish there until the rain passed, or stopped enough that I could drive the boat without getting the "Sting Eye" from the rain drops.

It didn't take long before the rain let up enough, so that we could run up to D Can and check there. The Mega Imaging was picking up some good fish on the bottom, so we gave it 15 minutes....nothing. So, we headed northeast...I was headed to the red buoy at West Reef, but the Helix lit up with marks about 2 miles west of the rattles on Rattlesnake, so I shut the boat down and set up on them with the "Spot Lock". I can't express how nice it is to use that feature on the Ulterra...just hit a button and the boat is anchored...and, no back pain! Ha!

Anyway...I digress....

I said, "Okay, it's 8:41...we'll give it to 9:00, and if they don't start biting, we'll move". But, luckily, they started to bite. It was slow at first, but within those 20 minutes, we had a pretty steady bite going...even some doubles. The grade of perch was nice too, and no one was complaining. :)

Amy had never perch fished before, and after a 1/2 morning of using the reel with the handle on the wrong side, she mentioned it, and let me change it for her....her technique greatly improved once she was more comfortable with the reel. lol

A funny moment, was when Bennett broke a hook off in a huge perch's mouth, and I could see the wheels turning in his head....I knew he wanted to remove the hook and toss the hook overboard, but instead what happened was....he looked at the hook, looked at me looking at him...and, then, somehow thinking he had removed the hook already...tossed the fish, with the hook still in its lip, overboard. We all laughed at his blooper moment. I'm sure it was one of those "you had to be there" moments, because it doesn't sound as funny in writing as it did in real life. :)

We limited out with 120 perch in about 3 1/2 hours. That's the best bite I've had in two weeks now. I also heard that the east side of the bass islands, where I was fishing the last few times out, lit up today, and limits were easy to come by.

I'm still concerned about the lack of smaller perch in the system right now, and fear that the young walleye have ravaged that year class of perch. That might not bode well for the future of our perch fishery....I guess we'll have to wait and see though.

Everyone had a good time, and Glenn and Amy would like to plan another trip the third week in September, to treat Ben, if it works out for everyone, and the weather plays nice. Fingers crossed! I really had a good time with them, and would love to fish with them again. :)

I'm not out again until September 5th....I don't have anything scheduled until then. But, looking at the wind forecast for the next few days, I guess I'm lucky I didn't have anything scheduled. She's going to blow some tomorrow, bad on Friday, and Saturday morning, but should be laying down again by Saturday afternoon. So, if you're going....be safe!

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls

I'm stuck in a conundrum as to when to fish for perch, did fish once for them 2 weeks ago, got limit of 9 inchers, no dinks which is a huge concern, 6 walleyes and a bunch of farm animals. No white perch this year is of concern to as the lake is being ravaged by all these walleyes, me thinks commercials will get a fatter quota next year on eyes and lower on the perch, just makes sense.
My bud and I in two boats, fished for walleyes and between the two, took 48 fish with variations in length and size.I don't know when to cut the eye fishing off and concentrate on some perch. Can't remember this scenario ever happening so late in the walleye season.Since the run to the fish is only a couple of miles, I guess I'll stick with them eyes and perch will have to wait. :)Good luck.