Dan had contacted me, to schedule a Walleye trip, but after seeing what the wind was going to do today, I called him yesterday, to tell him that where we had to go for walleye would be too rough. I didn’t want to take them to Lorain, because I hadn’t been over there in about a month, and wasn’t going to take them for a long, rough, boat ride, for a bite that may or may not exist, where I was thinking it might. “I’m not going to take your money on a guess…and, it’s going to get rougher as the morning goes on,” I said. “If you want to go perch’n over here by the islands, I would love to take you,” I added. He was receptive to that idea, and we made plans to meet at Catawba at 6:15, this morning.
I left the house at 4:30, so I could get over to Hi-Way Bait before they opened, just in case another early crowd gathered… but, that didn’t happen. There were only two others there with me, when it opened at 5am. The scoops were mostly Goldies, but they were a good size, and mixed with a few small Emeralds.
I headed down to Catawba after hitting the gas station, looking for some Cheetos, but they were out…deep sigh. I got to the ramp at 5:30, so I had 45 minutes to waste before my crew was expected. Luckily, they showed up 15 minutes early, so we launched a little after 6am, and headed back to my spot just SSW of Green.
Normally, it would have been in 27-28 feet of water, but because of the NE blow we had all day yesterday, the lake level was up on this end, and that spot was now 30 feet deep. However, it was still holding fish in the area, and the Helix showed some good marks.
I deployed the Minn-Kota, and hit the Spot-Lock, to anchor us over them.
“I usually give it 20-30 minutes, before moving,” I said. “It’s almost 6:30 now, so if we don’t get something going by 7am, we’ll move”. Then, I added the usual bet of “First yellow in the boat wins a dollar”. And, just as I said that, Dan set the hook on a fish, and exclaimed, “I’m in!”. Ha! Unfortunately, he lost it before it got to the surface. So, Troy and I still had a chance.
Then, Troy set the hook, and again, he lost it his, too. About a minute later, I said, “Winner-winner chicken dinner,” and put the first perch in through the Catch-Counter. 🙂
It wasn’t a fast bite, and like my last trip out, we were missing a lot of bites. Thankfully, the perch were in the mood for Goldies, even though I had brought along some frozen Emeralds to use too. We were using one of each on a two hook crappie rig, and figured we would let them tell us which they liked better, but it seemed to be a 50/50 split on flavor.
They did seem to like littler offerings, than big minnows on the hooks, so picking out the little minnows, or splitting the bigger ones in half, was the ticket for us.
We caught our 3-person limit in about 5 hours, so it wasn’t a fast bite. They would come and go, but didn’t stay away long enough to get me thinking we needed to move, and we stayed in the same spot from start to finish.
Dan, and his son, Troy, had a good time, and did a great job. Troy is looking forward to making a nice fish fry for his Grandparents when he gets back home, and that makes me happy!
Looks like some very not weather tomorrow with thunderstorms expected. Be careful out there.
I’m not back out until next week, unless someone is looking to do a perch trip, and the weather behaves.
Stay tuned….
Capt Juls
