Fishing with Billy, Josh, and Jeremy...8/3/2025

This morning, my crew was meeting me at Catawba to go do some perch fishing. Billy, Josh, and Jeremy came up from Cincinnati, but were staying in a camper at Cedar Point, so I couldn't pick them up. I asked that they meet me at 6:00am.

I hit Hi-Way Bait for some minnows, but like everyone else, they didn't have any Emerald Shiners, but they did have the perfect size Goldies available, so I picked up 5 scoops for 4 of us. I always prefer the Emeralds, but sometimes, you take what you can get.

I arrived at Catawba at 5:30 and got things ready while I waited for them. They showed up at 5:45. The air temp was 67 degrees, the sky was mostly clear with a haze hanging over everything, and the wind was mostly non-existent. That would make for an easy ride out. The wind forecast was calling for east winds to kick up to 5-10mph later in the morning.

We launched at 6:00 and headed to the B-Can area, due to a report Billy had gotten and texted me last night, so I figured that's where he wanted to go, and if I went anywhere else, and it was slow, he wouldn't be happy. So, I wanted to make him happy and headed to B-Can. If it was slow up there, then at least we were where he wanted to be.

Billy has fished this lake all his life, and up until two years ago, always had his own boat, so he knows the Western Basin well, and I wanted to show respect to his years of knowledge. Billy is 84 years young, and in the best shape I've ever seen someone at that age. I was truly impressed. :)
Josh is either his son, or son-in-law, I'm not sure, and is Jeremy's father. So, it was fun having three generations in the boat, at one time.

We ended up fishing over 28 feet of water, about a 1/2 mile east of B-Can. There was a pack of boats closer to the can, and further to the east, but no one near us.

The bite started out really slow, and when I thought about leaving, someone would catch a nice perch, so we just kept staying put. The wind picked up around 9:15, and our flat lake turned into 1s, then 2s, and then pretty steady 3s, with a 4 thrown in from time to time. The marine forecast, of course, said, "Waves 1 foot or less" for the day. lol I never believe their marine forecasts, because they are never correct when predicting NNE or E winds/waves.

We started out with some of my homemade crappie rigs, "Fishing Addiction" Flies, and Billy had his own homemade crappie rig to use, too. I ended up taking off my homemade rig, and put on a blue FA Fly rig, and started getting bit faster.

Hooking the minnow, by opening the minnow's mouth, and inserting the hook, then pushing the hook through the back of the head, gave the minnow/fly a good profile, and kept it alive a little longer. My neighbor Danielle came up with that one. I usually went through the belly instead, but they die right away, that way.

We ended up with 90 perch, but I don't know the weight, because I didn't drop them off at the cleaners for them, but they were mostly nice 8-10" perch. A couple were bigger and some were smaller, but the average was the 8-10" range.

They were having a good time, and said they had a good time, so that makes me happy!

I'm off tomorrow and will have another perch trip with repeat customer, Lisa Wilcox. I think she's bringing a friend, but it might just be her.

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls

Nice to get a limit of perch juls. Good work.

Sometimes, I think we western basin boaters need to chip in and and buy the weather guys in Cleveland a window they can look through to see the actual lake conditions. It sure seems like they miss it a lot, usually in the wrong direction.