Perch'n with the Chapman's 8/25/14
Today I fished with Steve Chapman, who is one of my regular customers, and his wife Cathy. Normally, he fishes with his son, Jeremy, so this was the first time I got to meet Cathy. What a great gal she is too. We had a lot of laughs at Steve's expense today. Sorry Steve! :)
We launched out of Mazurik's at 8:15(ish) and headed out to the NE corner of Gull Island Shoal. Two days ago, my other customers and I got into a good mess of bigger perch out there, so we thought we would start there first.
Well, although there were a few large perch caught there, it wasn't fast by any means, and we went through a lot of giant sheephead to get a handful of perch. I didn't want to waste that many minnows on Sheep.
I decided it was time to move a little to try and locate a bigger school of perch rather than sheep. Our second spot wasn't much better, so we moved to the west side of the shoal this time. The first spot on the west side was the same results...lots of sheep, so we picked up and started to head to Lucy's. About 1/2 way to the can at Lucy's I saw that the water was getting dirtier as we went west, so I set the Ranger down off plane to figure out where I wanted to go next.
I looked at my waypoints from last season, and chose one. I set the "go to" on the Humminbird and got back on plane. For some lucky reason, I happened to look down at the sonar at the right time and saw some good marks, so I slowed down and checked it out. The marks were unreal, and just what I had been looking for! Setting the "Spot Lock" on the Terrova (anchor), we got busy and again caught sheephead....sigh....#%@$%!!!
But, just when I was about to say, "Let's move again", Steve caught a nice fatty perch, so I kept my mouth shut and gave it some time. It's a good thing we did, because it just got better and better the longer we stayed (which is usually how it works, when you have enough patience).
Since I will not be perch fishing for a while, and those fish will probably not be there when I can get back over to them, I'm going to share my numbers with you all, because there were bunches of them, and I want everyone to have as much fun as we did today...:)
N41.40.557 W082.43.572
After 6 hours we ended with their two person limit of 60 perch that weighed in at 24 pounds. (.4# per fish average).
Cathy caught a huge legitimate 14 inch perch today. I measured it on "The Judge" ruler, so it's as accurate as can be.
She was just getting over some seasickness and Steve convinced her to start fishing again...her second fish was this monster! When she pulled it in she asked, "Is this a perch?" And, I said, "That's not a perch, that's a freak'n Peacock Bass!" lol I explained to her what she had just caught, and how it's not that common to get them that big. She had caught a "Fish-Ohio" perch. Nice!
Anyhooo....it was a great day on the water. It was a gorgeous day out there and the heat and humidity was not a factor out there. It was just beautiful...I didn't want to come in, but it was time.
I don't have anything scheduled until Thursday, unless I get a trip before then, and that one is a walleye trip, so I won't be out perch'n again for a while.
Stay tuned...
http://www.julswalleyefishingadventures.com/Blog.html
