6/11, 6/12 perch

[raywriter]

A friend and I have been enjoying some good action for jumbo perch by jigging the west shore breaklines south of Gladstone. The recipe for us has been to start by finding fish on the locator, then anchoring and working a jig through them. This morning I stopped at Bay View and picked up perch minnows, wigglers and crawlers. I caught perch on all three baits. Twenty-five feet was our best depth. Also, I caught one of my best perch ever about 10 am. It was just a fraction under fifteen inches and shaped like a smallmouth bass. My friend joked that if he pulled the tail and I pulled the head, we could get it to reach a true fifteen inches. Anyway, 14 7/8" is not too bad. Yesterday, my friend landed a 25" walleye using the same basic approach.

[The Bait Shop Guy]

Nice catch, Ray. Definitely been some good perch fishing along that break this year.

I finally got Diane to go out fishing last night. After a little searching, we started marking good numbers of fish on the slope of the breakline, in 22 to 25 FOW. All we used was wigglers on perch rigs. We ended up keeping 20 nice ones, and a couple small fish that were hooked bad.

Water has warmed considerably the last few days, (68 to 70 degrees where we were at.) Made a couple tolling passes in the Escanaba River when we came in, and caught a bunch of small walleyes. Also noticed that when the wind died, there were alewives spawning all over the place.

[The Bait Shop Guy]

All the strong north wind on Thursday scattered everything, so we hardly marked any fish in the areas we've been perch fishing the last couple weeks. Regrouped and started trolling for walleyes in the Escanaba River. Diane and I caught 16 undersized fish on #6 Husky Jerks and small Rebel crayfish.