Perch

[5285]

10\5-6
Spent the last two weekends casting for walleye at Big Pickerel with mixed success because the perch fishing was so slow, but this weekend that turned around.

Two of us went out Saturday evening on a rough ride to D can to see if we could locate some perch since I had a group coming up to fish Sunday. We finally located some decent marks around 5 pm and dropped the anchor (waves were too big to run the spot lock on the trolling motor). I was going to be happy if we could catch a few fish and get a place to start on Sunday. 1 hr and 40 minutes later we were pulling the anchor with 2 limits of perch in the cooler. We threw quite a few 5 and 6 inch perch back, 60 perch weighed 17 lbs at Shatto's Fish cleaning. Most were 7 to 8 inch with some 9s and 10s and one 11 inch.

Sunday morning 5 of us went to the same spot in my 30' (much nicer ride). Fished for a half hour with no bites, made a quarter mile move to some decent marks and tried again. 3 and a half hours and we had our 150 perch. Same size as Saturday but a little slower bite, everyone was happy and it made for a nice day on the water.

Fish were all caught on 3 hook crappie rigs on the bottom and very large emerald shiners from A and J bait. We cut the shiners in 3 and 4 pieces. It will be nice if bigger fish move in as the water cools, but if the bite stays good I will gladly take what the lake gives us. Hopefully this is the end of a long dry spell for catching perch.