Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Perchin' After the Thaw

I went into it with little to no expectation.  
And as with many trips without the possibility of a big let down, 
it turned out to be a memorable one. 


Work, babies, and an extra hour and a half in the wrong direction made what used to be a once or twice a week thing into a rare occurrence.  The message from Justin Mayer saying that he's actually planning on fishing reminded me of some great trips we've had.  Naturally, I accepted the invite...

My more recently acquired fishing buddy, Jeff Lockhart and I met Justin at a creek northeast of Richmond hoping for yellow perch.  Their spawn migration should be in full effect in most rivers in the area.  But having heard of a lot of ice still on many of the normal spots to find them or the water being high and muddy, I didn't get my hopes up.  If it was fishable, I planned on locating schools with live minnows then switching to grubs and blade baits.

Well I definitely found them in decent numbers and sizes.  Jeff, Justin, his dad Curtis and I couldn't get them to take any artificials but we did have good luck on the minnows.  I happened to have the hot rod of the day and landed 16 with 5 over trophy sized (12") and one at 13".  Not being an avid perch fisherman, I didn't know the best live minnow rig for them so I just macguyered a small sinker, with a little dropper loop 10" above that with a little aberdeen hook.  It seemed to get the job done.



From not expect much to ending up with 5 little big fish trophies in one day definitely put a grin on my face.

Needless to say, my kids were eating good.  They even got into a discussion about how they liked it much better than the speckled trout they had last time.  Natalie went on to say she thought flounder was better.
"That's debatable, sweetie."



Fish prints to coming soon...

1 comment:

  1. thanks for sharing! i'm glad spring is on the verge. flounder is probably my favorite. haven't tried perch.

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