Category: Uncategorized

Is any body pulling bandits any more this season

Got up to SBI late Friday evening and drove through some horrible storms (and a tornado warning) to get there. Picked up 3 scoops of shiners and Goldie mix from HiWay on way in.

Saturday AM the wind was still strong SW from storm but was able to sneak into lee of rattlesnake off the run way with a few boats and immediately had good marks and bites. Caught 30 in about 3 hours from 9am-noon, good grade or 8-11” with most being that 8.5-9.5 range. Had a few doubles and a couple spurts of up and down action.

Woke up Sunday excited for quick limit again and was immediately reminded how finnicky perch can be. Went back to same area, and found same marks, but fish had lock jaw. Spent over an hour fishing those marks with only 2 in cooler to show for it. Pulled anchor and headed toward Green and settled between Green and Rattlesnake, closer to rattlesnake, on good marks again. Caught 20 nice perch, mostly 9-10” range, in about 2 hours before I had to go in due to time with 22.

On Saturday pretty much everything worked, but especially 1/2 shiner seemed best. Sunday the smaller baits worked better and they almost seemed to prefer the tiny live goldies I had to the cut shiners.

Both times I was in 30-32 FOW with excellent marks. Was fishing spreader with tru turn #4 hooks, no bling.. those things are sharp and stuck a lot of perch.

Super fun to have such high numbers of nice perch back around.. the last couple seasons have been tough for perchin.

Thanks to all for the reports.. helpful info in this group.

Finally made it out for some perch and had a great time getting “back in the saddle”. Had been out a handful of times in the previous 2 years with very little to show and was gettin worried about the state of perch’n in the western basin!

Went out of E Harbor and planned to hit G can since thats all the hot reports I had heard this week. Stopped to fish in a pack straight off E Harbor about a mile and never left. They were never hot and heavy but picked through enough to make it worthwhile! Ended up with 22 and would have had about 40 if my cousin could set the hook. Also didnt get out on the water until about 10am so I am sure we would have done a little better if we had gotten at it earlier. Best bite was between about 1-4 pm.

Emeralds on splitters and veeeery light bite. Maybe would feel a tap tap and would have to lift the rod to “load” the bite and then set when it felt like he was still there.

Really glad to see that the perch fishing is back to being consistent! Hoping to make it out again with the family but our 2 year old only likes catching, not fishing ;);).

Tight lines all!!

Perched west of Kelleys Island Sunday in 24 FOW. Arrived around 7:30am and settled in a bit away from 2 other boats (close enough to see if they were pulling in fish). By 9:30, the pack had grown to about 30 boats. Slow but steady fishing throughout the morning. Very light bite and many lost minnows (frozen and fresh shiner/goldy mix). ‘Only’ 31 fish between 2 of us but I’ll still take it over recent years.

Saw a large pack of boats off Marblehead on the way back in to Sandusky. One of the cleaners at the fish house said that business has been great for the past 6 weeks and that there have been many customers coming in with their limit off Marblehead. G-Can and Green Island are a bit of a hike out of Sandusky but Marblehead and off Kelleys Island appear to be good locations for those launching east of Port Clinton area.

Hope this helps.

I have been reading the threads indicating great success Perch fishing this year, so I decided to give it a try last Friday with a friend and his 7 year old son. We left Delaware about 4:30 am for the drive to Lake Erie. After re-reading some of these informative threads on the way to the Lake, and making calls to find live bait, we decided to visit Fisherman’s Wharf in Port Clinton. The employees at FW were very helpful in helping us buy what we needed for our first trip out. We launched out of Catawba State Park and headed toward the Islands to look for marks. We set up using the 3/4 ounce spreaders and combination of emerald shiners and goldies (I think that’s what they are called, they were much smaller). The guys at FW told us to cut the larger emerald shiners into thirds, so we did.

Our bite was very slow in the beginning, but I don’t think we were in the right place. I was trying to figure out where G can was with my nav unit, as a lot of reports said that area was a good place to try. While trying to locate this spot, I couldn’t help notice a spread of about 75-85 boats about another mile from where we were trying our luck. We looked at each other and thought the same thing. We headed toward the pack and made sure to stay a distance and not cramp any ones space. The marks were definitely better and we finally started catching Perch. We got so excited to be catching Perch and keeping his son entertained that we were well on our way to 90. We had to empty the cooler back into the live well twice to recount because we kept forgetting to add on our way to our limit.

The bite was very light and sometimes I would lift my rod thinking it was the motion of the waves and boat and I would have a fish. We finished with our limit about 12:30 and headed back to get some lunch. We considered using the cleaners right across from Fisherman’s Wharf, but the sign on the door said that fish dropped off Friday would be ready the next day. No worries we thought, “just how long can it take two guys to filet 90 perch”? Good grief, let me tell you that’s a decision I won’t make again without some major changes. A lot of our fish were small, less than 8 inches. Next time we go, I will definitely be more selective in what size goes into the cooler and what size get to grow some more.

All in all, if your thinking about going to catch some Perch, this seems to be as good a season as advertised. It was very relaxing and fairly steady catch, although our sizes were on the small end. The water temps were around 76-78 and we fished in 22-24 FOW.

Jeff

2 of us went out Sunday morning from West side of Catawba. We were in the first 25 boats with Lines in water just before 8am and finished limits at 11am. Took us 40 minutes to get the last half dozen. The bite changed for us right after he sent his wife a text for more time to catch our limit. Go figure. By the time we left, it looked like 300 boats stretching to halfway between SBI and Catawba. Beautiful day to be out.

We were about a mile and quarter S of west corner of Green Island. Depth of 31 fow. Crappie rigs clearly desired over spreaders. We only had large shiners so we were cutting them up. Early on into halfs about 1.25 inches long. When we were half done, we cut them even smaller. The last hour I was cutting my fish into fifths and using 2 pieces each hook. The perch were steeling the first piece and when they came back for the second, I got them.

They weighed 23 pounds at cleaners.

Tight lines,

Rickerd

Attached Images

John and I fished Sunday north of Kellies.Was a tough bite for us. Fished for 6hrs and only managed 8 fish that weighed 17lbs.Biggest was 23″ and got a 12″yellow perch too. Program that worked for us was the same as last week, when we fished near the weather Bouy. Had 4 dipseys out at 3/80 and 85 with double willow gold blades and 1 setting at 65 and 60 with J7. The dipseys caught all our keepers except one on a crank. Had 2 inline boards out the whole time with an assortment of cranks and leads and only managed one keeper, Speed was 2.1-2.5mph.

We headed NE out of Vermillion to fish the deeper water for Walleye. We went to where we were catching large numbers last week in 45 ft of water. There were still good marks but they were scattered.

We worked hard for 6 hours for only 6 keepers but they were all solid 20+
We sorted through several shorts, no trash. We didn’t have a solid program but the best we found was spoons in blue silver down 35 at 2.7mph on the Hawk.

We did pickup a solid 4 lb Steelhead that helped the guests have a good time.

We fished South of the pack that was South of Green Island. Four of us ended up with 110 perch before we ran out of time. I was hoping we would limit out in time but I’m never going to complain about catching that many perch. Everyone was using crappie rigs with full emerald shiners. We had to do very little sorting, most perch were in the 8-9” range with a decent amount being 9.5-10”.

We will be fishing for perch out of Port Clinton next week and was where is the best place to get the fish cleaned and what is the going rate to clean them?