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We stayed off Marblehead today. The bite slowed for us from yesterday when it was solid. Today it was spotty and hit and miss. We moved several times but could not stay on a solid bite. We had 39 respectable keepers. We returned maybe a dozen shorts. Crappie rigs with emeralds.

No trash this trip, just Perch.

We have some scheduled down time, but will be back at it next week.

3 hours today had a nice swing and then the wind died down, dozen returns to get bigger and 4 sheep head.
got a late start but still I did enjoy the weather today, no bugs and a nice breeze to start the day.
A few boats in the area and two head boats setup after 12pm so that trip up some where north of G can must not have produced for them.

Looks like rain on Tuesday, so going to look toward a trip later in the week.
Fish On, Be Safe and pull those lips!
~ Water Dog

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Fished for half day 2 weeks ago. Experienced a power outage so had to uncover the motor to the boat lift and manually spin the fly wheel (for about 15 minutes) to lower the boat. Buzzed over to Sandusky boat ramp, bought frozen minnows (no live bait at the time) and then out to west of Kelleys island. Caught 31 perch between 2 of us in about 5 hours so slow bite. Perch were small with many throw-backs.

Power was still out when returning to the dock so we had to manually spin the fly wheel for about 45 minutes this time to lift the boat about 4 feet (going up with the boat weight takes a lot more time and energy than going down!).

Decided to drop a line off the dock once the boat was stowed (back bay in Sandusky). We have had much past success catching perch there in only 4′ of water. Caught this nice 12″ perch and a handful of others in the late afternoon.

Went out a week later without much success. The boat lift cable broke this next time so went out to Home Depot, purchased new cable, eyelet and U-clamps, and repaired the lift in a few hours. Fished off the dock that night and pulled in enough perch for a few sandwiches.

No complaints here, just have to laugh. LOVE being on the water. LOVE smallmouth fishing off Kelleys in the spring, walleye fishing the reefs, and bobbing around perch fishing with a view of Perry’s Monument. But I seriously have to consciously commit to forgetting about the fuel costs, the repair costs/time and the regular maintenance entailed with owning a boat when I’d likely be better served dropping a line in 4′ of water, lol! My wife often reminds me the cost of perch per pound at Kroger’s vs my personal cost of perch per pound….. but I wouldn’t change a thing….

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We are scheduled for a Perch trip tomorrow so we went out today to scout some spots. We fished from the Marblehead light house to S Bass around Kelley’s back to the lighthouse. We worked 23 – 35 ft of water.

To make a long story short the best depth was 30 ft. We had one spot we picked up 30 and the rest just a few each. But to be fair, we never gave them a long shot as we were just hunting. 2 spots we zeroed. We brought in 45 for the freezer.

While the bite was slower than a few weeks ago, the sizes are getting better. We had no throw backs. One was 7 inches but everything else was 8 to 10 with a couple bigger.

We had one big cat off the lighthouse, a couple sheep, one white, and 3 Gobies.

We used our typical hunting rig (drop shot rig) with half an emerald on each hook.

Sean and Linda drove down from Wisco to fish with me. They had scheduled their trip back in 2021, but due to some puppies that needed taking care of, (they own a kennel in Wisconsin, near Madison, and a resort out on the west side of Devils Lake, ND), so they had to reschedule. We tried again in 2022, but Mother Nature said, “Nay-Nay”, and blew hard, so that trip was rescheduled too. Yesterday, and today, were the days they could come, but the lake wasn’t too kind, as far as giving up her finny friends.


With some wind and possible thunderstorms, yesterday, we opted to try some perch fishing out in front of Mazurik’s and Lakeside. We hit a total of 6 spots, with the best being out in front of the Lakeside pier, in 26 feet of water.


We were also chased off the water by an incoming storm, a little early, so we headed in with only one limit out of a possible three. The bite was light, and the fish were like little “Houdini’s”, stealing our minnows, when we tried to set the hook on them.


I told them, I would add the time the storm took away from us, to this morning’s trip, so we could go try for walleye first, and if that didn’t work out (due to the amount of floating grass out there), that we could go perch’n again. They were happy with that plan.


So, this morning, we launched out of Mazurik’s at 6:30, and headed up to Kelly Island Shoal. We made one pass over the shoal first, with crawlers, but that produced nothing, but a few missed bites and missing crawlers. Then, we set the trolling gear out to try and troll from the shoal up to the line.

Dipsies were set on the zero and three settings, on each corner with the zero settings set at 40 and 45 to start, and the three settings set at 65 and 80 to start.


The Off Shore boards were pulling Bandits set anywhere from 65 to 120 feet back. The port side ran three boards, while the starboard side ran two. We were only allowed 9 lines for the three of us.


The floating grass took the Bandits out of the equation pretty quickly, and they were put away.


We caught one walleye, one sheephead, and one giant catfish on the dipsies running spoons, but they were getting fouled with the floating grass pretty quickly, too, so we opted to just go perch fishing again.


The waves were 1-3s at the shoal, so we drove down the east side of Kelly’s to the SE corner, to see if we could mark any perch there, before heading back to our spot at Lakeside. Nada….so, we drove down to the lighthouse, and set up out in 35 feet of water, out in front of it. The marks were really good, but the bottom was really soft in that spot, and we only caught one in 20 minutes, so we moved in closer to the lighthouse.
Again, good marks when we stopped, but they soon disappeared after we set up, so we only stayed another 15 minutes, to see if they would come back around…they didn’t.


We moved back to our spot out in front of Lakeside Pier, in 26 feet of water, and started catching a few. The bite was slow, and the bite was light again, but we managed to get 20 in the box, before heading in. We had been discussing Mexican food, and we all got hungry, and went to Casa Las Palmas for lunch. lol


The fishing was excellent, but the catching was poor again, unfortunately, but once again, I had customers with positive attitudes, and we had a lot of fun anyway.


Sean and Linda run “Dakota Sunset Resort” (Dakota Sunset Resort – Minnewaukan, ND), and come this winter, will be once again running ice fishing trips, for perch. So if anyone is looking for a good place to stay, with some great guides, check them out. They are super nice people! 🙂


My next scheduled trip is Sunday (perch)…hopefully, now that the cooler weather is coming back, and the full moon is gone, the bite will hopefully start picking up again.


Stay tuned…


Capt Juls

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It was a bit choppy both days but we stuck it out and got our 60 Saturday and 52 Sunday. We started just south of G can and moved around noon to the H can area. I rarely move but the wind wasn’t letting up and we only had 25 at this point. The bite turned on around 1 and it was steady until we reached our 60 around 230. Went to the same spot Sunday morning and it was a slow bite but we stuck it out and had 52 before heading in at 1. Very light bite and it was tough in the chop. We kept nothing under 8″ and had 20 lbs sat and 16 Sunday.

Started out yesterday with a small pack of boats at American Eagle Shoal and only got two perch in an hour. We decided to move closer to PIB, about 1-1.5 miles East of Perry’s Monument and we picked up 38 more perch. Everything was caught with frozen emeralds and crappie rigs. They weren’t biting on goldies yesterday. The size of the perch seem to be getting better, almost everything we caught was 9-9.5” with a few 10-11” thrown in there.

Hope everyone is having a happy and safe Labor Day Weekend!

Our guests today had previously fished for Walleye with us this Spring and wanted to Perch.

We didn’t get out until late but they managed to get their 60 Perch in about 4 hours. It was one of those steady pick kind of days. Never a fast pace, just a slow grind. We only had 2 doubles.

But it was a first time I ever saw this. We had a double with one nice Perch and a large Sheep on the same rig. We had only the one sheep and no whites today, that was nice.

There were boats on the spot we fished last night so I came further south to 27 ft of water and marked a nice school of Perch we had all to our selves. They were smaller than the fish we had further north but still 7 to 8.

Neither of our guests had Perch fished before, so we set them up with crappie rigs with live Goldies (we did well on live goldies last evening). They weren’t catching much of anything at first, but I noticed the few they did catch were on the smallest goldies. It turned out today they wanted a small bait. We ended up cutting the goldies smaller and smaller. We ended up using a 1/4 to 1/2 inch piece, that is what these particular fish wanted. They were spitting up sand fleas, so maybe that is why they wanted such a small bait.

It was a nice afternoon with nice people. BTW they caught their own 60 with none from Capt. Christy or me. They wanted to beat some friends who fished with us earlier and only caught 53 on their own.

For those who want to see pics, we post them on the fishing tiger charters facebook page. Feel free to follow us there.

We went scouting for perch today. This was our first trip looking for perch since the storms. The reports we were getting weren’t sounding positive.

We started N of Catawba and set up just off a pack. We didn’t see many jerking but we started catching a few. But they were all small, 6 ish. So we moved N toward Green. We made several stops over marks but the bite was very slow.

We finally moved E toward the N end of Kellys and started catching quality fish in 30 ft NW of Kelleys.

The best bite for us was on live Goldies hooked in the back so they could swim. Multiple rigs produced but a simple drop shot rig cast out, then dragged across the bottom did the best. We kept 30 over 8. We had one jumbo just shy of 12 and 2 more 11s. We had 3 doubles and caught 60 to 70 to cull out the 30 best. Maybe 4 sheep and we had a wave of white perch come through that wore us out for 30 minutes.

We caught on frozen emeralds but the live goldies were best.

We will be back perching with guests tomorrow.

When will the walleye start heading back around the reefs?