Friday Oct 24th Perch at Catawba

Fished Friday with Tibbels party boat out of Marblehead courtesy of my financial planner and some of his clients. 13 people plus the captain with myself and my 15 year old son left the dock with dreams of catching some nice sized perch. Everyone I saw on the boat was using the vertical crappie rigs. First spot we sat down 300 yards SE of the green can at Catawba out of the wind in what I think the captain said was 23 FOW. We had some nice mid sized shiners as bait. It was very slow. Several hours later we moved to about one half mile NE of the can. Nothing fast at all. The third move we made in the six hours was SE closer to Mouse Isle. A little better there. One retired guy
who fishes a couple times a week got 23 perch. My son got 5 and I caught 2. The boat had 97 for the day. It was tough for most of us on the boat to lose any bait, let alone have a soft easy bite.

IT was a nice warm fall day, it was a great location fishing along Catawba Clifts, but as we know, the fish have chosen other diets instead of minnows. Whenever we brought a perch in, they were coughing up spiney water fleas and invertebrates.