Kelleys Perch & A Record Drum

Went out to Kelleys this morning on a trip mainly out of boredom. Trolled SE of the island 28-34 FOW from 7-10am and got 2 walleyes on 3 color leadcore as well as numerous drum and white bass. Stopped trolling at 10 and set up over one of the many balls of baitfish we saw on sonar and started perching. Using half minnows on the bottom with slack line we picked up 20 nice perch in 2 hours. It was slow and they were scattered but they were nice fish. Stayed out of the pack, don't think they were doing much better plenty of them running around in there. Oh yeah, I caught a sheephead on a dipsey today that went 38" and 30lbs. Let her swim away because at the time I didn't realize that the state record was only 23.5lbs. Needless to say, i'm pretty pissed at missing the opportunity to own a state record fish, even if it was a sheeper.

Bummer!!!!

I can thankfully say I have never seen one that big. It look lilke it ate a few of the ones I have caught

one big sheephead, awsome job. Just think if you kept it you would have proably got it mounted and you would have the state record sheephead above your mantle. not sure if that would be good or bad but having a state record in any species is cool.

Thats a big fish..

Nice catch, you are quite the shepherd! I don't know about you, but I would have wanted to get that thing off my boat as soon as possible. Well, hopefully others can also have the thrill (or horror) or catching that beast.

Holy Sheep!

yeah definitely wouldn't have mounted it haha...but it would have been funny to have the record for biggest piece of trash

I think you can give it to the state and they will mount it and put it on display with your name on it. Nice fish!

Awesome story! Great picture! I've shown a lot of friends and coworkers that picture and told your story. That's a hog of a sheepie! What did you catch it on, as far as test line, etc?

I've got some nice sheephead and know how they fought. I can't imagine a 30pounder!

That thing is HUGE. At least you have the picture to proove it.

I did the exact same thing below the Gavins point dam on the south dakota nebraska border water, wanna know the thing that will really make you mad, Cabelas or Bass pro would have given you about 25,000$ for that fish, the world record cat fish in texas went for over $125,000. Mine was over 42" and broke the 35# scale i had onboard. Welcome to my club of repeatedly kicking yourself in the butt over a drum, by the way mine was over 6 yrs ago and im still kickin myself.

I got it on a rebel stickbait running behind a dipsey, so I had about 80 foot of line out when it hit and 300 foot out when it was done running. 40lb braid and a 17lb leader. Fun fight