9/30 Perch - Toledo Light

Wife and I had 60 keepers in the cooler after fishing less than two hours today.

We got two scoops of big emeralds from Fisherman’s Cave and launched out of Cullen Park around 9:00. Ranger had us to the lighthouse in only 15 minutes. Lake was flat until we got close to the lighthouse and the 250 had us comfortably cruising at 45mph. We passed the lighthouse and before reaching the next buoy, setup right on the edge of the north side of the channel in 21-22’ of water. I marked nice schools of fish approaching our final spot but of course the screen was blank when we hit the anchor on the trolling motor and started setting lines.

We normally fish 2-3 rods each, setting some in rod holders and holding one each. Spreaders with hefty hooks and emeralds cut in 1/3 or 1/4. We immediately started catching and didn’t so much as look up for an hour. It was quickly obvious that using multiple rods was unnecessary and chaotic so we switched to just one rod each. Once we figured out that with the light bite, we had to keep the rod in hand and watch the tip to wiggle for a bite, it was up and down for an hour.

The DNR stopped by and we barely stopped fishing. It was comical. We both had doubles as they rolled up. They looked through their binoculars at my phone where I displayed our licenses and when they were satisfied, promised not to give away our location to other fisherman and pulled away.

20# more for the slaughter sisters to clean and based on the other buckets of perch at the cleaners, we weren’t the only ones catching.