Did not get a particularly early start perch fishing yesterday, dropped our lines roughly about 10:30. It was the shakedown cruise for my neighbor’s boat after some repairs and adjustments. Basically we wanted to make sure she would float.
We had only picked up two scoops of shiners at Jeff’s B&T and a couple dozen crawlers, just in case we never took the boat off the trailer and had to pull out in a hurry. After our inspection, we headed out through the channel, on the way seeing a doe walk through the southern marsh section out onto the lil’ island before you get to the boat club.
We set up North of the River Raisin channel in 20.4 foot of water. There were few boats about, but nobody was really concentrated too close. This the pattern we experienced; a dry period for about 10 to 15 minutes, then a couple of five inchers, then slamfest for 10 minutes. Just could not keep the lines in the water during that period.
Boats came and went, and if they had just stayed put during that short period of not catching fish, they would have experienced those runs that started shortly after the dry spells. All in all, we had five doubles that day, would have been six, but cannot count the one I had with a rock bass.
We fished with vertical rigs, never breaking the spreaders out. We kept a few fish that swallowed hooks, but all in all, most of the fish in the cooler were 8 to 10 inchers, with a few 12 inch kickers. The hot snells seemed to be the ones with 5 mm glow beads rigged up, with or without the flicker blade.
Best hint of the day, when those lil 5 inch buggers came through, best way to entice the big ones was to left and fall your rod tip and then shake. Give it a rest, and slowly lift the tip to feel for the soft bite. Sometimes they would hammer it, while other times you would only feel the bite by lifting the rod slowly up to feel that slight resistance.
Well they are out in the cooler, iced up and ready to be cleaned. Time to sharpen some blades and get to work. Will take some pics, but that is pretty much the story.