Fishing with Lisa and Sandy...8/6/2025

Lisa Wilcox has fished with me a couple of times in the past, and this time she brought a friend from the barn where she keeps her horse. Sandy has never perch fished before, so it was all new to her, but she isn't new to fishing.

I picked them up from one of Tammy and Mark Collins VRBO's. The house is beautiful, with old wood trim that has been taken care of, and sits right on the Portage River. The name of the house is called, "Ethel's Place".

I told them I would be there at 5:45, since the sun wasn't going to rise until 6:35, this morning.
I pulled up at 5:36 and texted that I was there, and there was no hurry. But, they were already walking down the driveway towards the truck. Lisa would later tell me (after we had already been fishing for a couple of hours) that she just found my text telling her I was there.

Lisa loves to fish and travels all over to fill her bucket list of species, so I feel honored that she has come back to me, for a third time. She's a hoot, and there's no shortage of laughs on the boat, so I always look forward to fishing with her. :)

We launched from Catawba at 6:30 and headed towards Green Island. I was surprised to see a commercial net set up in the busiest travel route from the islands to Catawba, or vice-versa. And, I never did find the south end of it, which is supposed to be marked with a single red flag, so someone probably hit it and broke it. I noticed the floats first, but never saw a flag. When I realized what was happening...that I was driving over the middle....between them...which is a no-no. Luckily, we got by it without incident.

There were several other sets of nets set up in another popular spot for a lot of sport fishermen/women...between Green and Rattle and just SW of Rattlesnake...about 1/2 to 3/4 miles away from the islands.
That's all I have to say on that...

We set up in 29' of water west of Green. The marks were very good, and looked like lasagna on the screen....my tell-tale sign there's perch down there.
The spot-lock on the Ulterra kept us in place.

The wind was light out of the southeast, the sky was partly cloudy, and the temp was....I forgot to look, but it was warm and muggy this morning.

I got things ready for everyone and showed Sandy how to hook the minnows, lower the perch rig to the bottom, take up the slack, and touch the line with her finger, so she wouldn't have to stare at the rod tip all morning. Then, I told her to give it a 3-5" hop every 5-15 seconds to give it some action.

She and Lisa were using Fishing Addiction Gear Fly Rigs, and I put one of my homemade crappie rigs on mine. Sandy was doing well on the light purple fly, so I swapped out Lisa's Chartreuse fly rig for another puple, and she started catching better. I had the Ice Blue fly on, which was really good on Monday up by B Can, but I couldn't get bit on it by Green, so I put one of mine on, which had white beads on it.

Long story short, Sandy would go on to outfish both Lisa and me this morning. We only caught 40 keepers and maybe 10 throw backs...4 sheephead, and no other species, so it wasn't a stellar catching day, but it was a fun day.
Sandy said it was a lot of fun, and that made both Lisa and me happy. :)

They called it when Lisa's dog became the focus of our attention. You see, he was in his crate while mom was out fishing, so for his well-being, we cut it an hour short to go take care of him. He's the sweetest dog. A mix of Husky, Boxer, and something else....cattle dog is in my head, but I'm not certain. All I know is he's cute and sweet. I always make sure to go over and see him when he is here.

We stopped at Port Clinton Fish, Co. on the way back, to have the fish cleaned, and it only took 10 minutes, so we just waited for them before heading back to Ethel's Place.

Side Note: The picture of the cork coasters that have my logo on it was created by Lisa. She took the logo off my website, and did some laser thingy to it, and gave them to me this morning when she hopped in the truck. I loved the gift, it was very thoughtful.

Lisa wants to come back in the fall to do a walleye trip again, so that makes me happy!

I'm off tomorrow and Friday, but will be back out on Saturday with Dan Daggert, who originally wanted to go walleye fishing, but said if the perch are biting, he would like to perch fish. So, I guess we'll decide which species to go after on Saturday.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls

Thank you for the perch report Captain Juls. Good to hear perching is firing up.

They commercial guys used to keep their nets out of the main travel routes and the popular perch fishing areas.Guess they don't need to be courteous to the boaters and fisherman anymore.