Fishing with Troy, Brad, and Taylor 10/24/2021

**Capt Juls** · 10-24-2021, 04:04 PM

I was up early this morning, to check the weather, and make sure that the winds were still forecast to be light, and the rain wasn't coming in until this afternoon.All was well, and my perch trip for the morning was still on.

I hit up A & J's for some Emerald Shiners, and then went out to Marblehead to fetch my boat from the heated storage building, and head over to Catawba to meet my Crew.

This morning, I was fishing with Troy, his brother-in-law Brad, and Brad's son, Taylor. They were out on their own boat yesterday and only caught 4 keeper perch over by Lakeside, so they wanted to go out with me this morning. I wasn't sure what kind of bite it would be, but since it was going to be a nice morning, I thought it couldn't hurt to try.

I met my crew at Catawba, and we were launched by 7:45. There was an extraordinary amount of foam at the launch this morning too. At first glance, one would think it was a sheet of ice, but it was just thick foam (from the wind, and algae bloom dying, I think. I don't know for sure). It was icky, to say the least.

We headed out towards G Can first. Brad, who was sitting shotgun, pointed out some perch net flags in front of us.... I was really surprised to see them so far out, because again, I have never seen the perch nets set on the west side of Catawba so close to the cans...so I slowed down to take a look to see if there were any perch in that area. But, the Humminbird didn't mark much there either, so we kept moving toward G.

We didn't find the marks I was looking for near the can, so we kept moving north and followed the "Picket Fence" line. When we got as far as Round Reef, I decided to head over the D Can, to see if anything was happening out there. No one else was there when we arrived, and there were some marks down below, so we decided to give it a try.

"Dollar for the first yellow?", I asked. They were game, so that dollar went to Troy. Brad bet 5 dollars for the first double yellows that could be kept. He won that one, and then they wanted another dollar bet on the 120th perch, so we were all scrambling to keep bait on the hooks and be on the bottom for that last fish, but the perch gods smiled upon me, and let me have that dollar....woot! woot!

At one point, Brad's rod broke right at the handle, which really surprised me, because it was bought new in the Fall. It's one of Jann's Netcraft's new perch rods, and they are nice rods. Hopefully, the other ones I bought do not follow suit. I'll take this one back, and I'm sure they will replace it for me.

I didn't have extra perch rods on the boat, so I let Brad use mine. Mine is an old rod I've had since 1987 and is very special to me, so even letting someone touch it, let alone use it, is very hard for me to do....but, it was the right thing to do, since he's the customer. I sat and twiddled my thumbs until I remembered that I had electrical tape in my glove box. There was enough rod handle there to attach my reel to it with the tape. It would just be a little awkward to use, but it would do the job just fine.

I was fishing again, so all was well in the world, except that I didn't get my rod back to use. lol

I took a picture of a little bugger that was mixed in with my minnows. Can anyone identify it? I thought at first glance it might be a baby smallmouth fry, but I'm not sure.

The crew had a good time, and will be back next June to learn how to run the Off Shore boards with me, so that makes me happy!

The weather is turning to crap for the next week, and my next trip is scheduled for next Friday, but I doubt we'll get that one in either, due to wind, but I can hope. Let's all hope that November is kinder to us wind-wise, than September and October have been. Fingers crossed....

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls