Fishing with the McGlothlin Brothers 3/26/16

[Capt Juls]

Picked up my crew at 6:15 at the Walmart parking lot. Tim and Matt brought up a camper to sleep in overnight, so that was a win win location. Cheap for them, and easy for me to pick them up.
We hit Bopper's for breakfast, before heading over to Mazurik's to launch. I figured Catawba would be a zoo again, and from what I heard, I was right.

My guys wanted to perch fish after getting a few walleye in the live well, so I wasn't sure where I was headed with them yet. That's when some friends of mine showed up in the get ready lane behind me, and told me that someone they knew was catching perch near Kelly's. That made the decision easy, since I wanted to find out if those walleye that have spawned in the last two weeks were over there yet.

The marks are not as thick as they are west of the islands yet, but there were enough to keep me interested and working hard for them. We landed 4 nice walleye, with the largest going just over 30 inches.

Best bait/leads were the Bandits at 45-50 back at 1.3-1.5mph. Black headed Wonderbread, Fire Tiger, and a purple one with chartreuse dots and a pink head were the colors....so, as you can see, there's not a preference in color. Just getting a bait in their face will get you bit.

With 4 nice walleye in the boat, they decided it was time to go look for some perch. The boat that I was told about, that had been perch'n there, wasn't doing very well from what I could see, so we headed north, up to Lucy's Point.

Unfortunately, the water was very clean, and void of fish on the Helix screen, so we moved west and headed to the Sugar Island / Middle Bass Island area. We marked some fish on the bottom, that we suspected might be perch, so we put the Ultra's Spot Lock to work and dropped some shiners down......nothing. (But, I will remember that nice rocky bottomed spot in the future.)

Still looking for the green and gold, we headed over to the Put-In-Bay area, but didn't find any there either...ugh. So, I said, "Let's head back down to Kelly's before that wind kicks up", and they agreed. We didn't see that perch boat there anymore.... I figured it was a waste of time to even try there, so we headed down to the Marblehead Lighthouse to give it a go.
A long story short....after a 6 hour day, we only had the 4 walleye in the live well. We never got a bite while trying for perch. I know they can be caught this time of year, I just have never tried for them this early, and I'm not exactly sure where they are. I usually don't start chasing them until mid-May.

Anyway, the guys had fun day on the water, and enjoyed the brownies, so that made me happy.

I'll be back out again with a new crew tomorrow, to chase walleye only. They originally wanted to chase some perch too, but after I told them today's results on perch, they agreed to just do the walleye tomorrow....whew!

The winds should be laying down over night, and tomorrow should be a nicer day all around.

Stay tuned....

Capt Juls

[Motor Mouth]

Well that sounded like a trying day! Nice job on the 4. I have caught perch this early, south of Kelleys in ferry lane. Another spot was on the NW corner of south bass right in the jet express lane. Problem with this early is size of shinners. Oh.... My 4yr old saw your pink net and went crazy. She loves it. See y on the water.

[Fishonphil]

Well the IU fan had something to smile about today, last night's game was hard to watch.
Perch can be finicky. Look's like a beautiful day on the water.
Good luck tomorrow

Thanks for sharing!

[wakina]

I don't know about now adays but we used to do well on perch off of Ceder Point this time of year and in April in 12 to 18 ft of water SE of the outer channel buoy. They must have been in there spawning caught egg laden females and milting males in that area.

[Capt Juls]

I don't know about now adays but we used to do well on perch off of Ceder Point this time of year and in April in 12 to 18 ft of water SE of the outer channel buoy. They must have been in there spawning caught egg laden females and milting males in that area.

Good to know....I was probably too deep then. The shallowest I went was 18'.