Pacemaker Fishing Forum

George and I were on the water by 8a. It was chilly (coooold!) out and the water was in the mid 60's. No bueno for perch!

We had a NW wind as the tide came in which made fishing the area I wanted to try at first a little tough. Especially without a trolling motor.

But our skunks came off quickly at the base of a jetty!





Not the target species but the skunk was off.

We had very few bites in a pretty good (past) area so I decided to move to a new (to me) area. Here, George got the 1st perch...



... which was a nice 11"er!

I was about to move again and George asked if we could stay and he followed up with a 10.5"er.

But after 30-40 minutes, no more landings.

One of the things that I did not want to do is fish Lake Ogleton because of the lack of a trolling motor but the wind was more than predicted and I was having trouble drifting.

So in to the lake (creek) we went.

At the first 2 stops, where Bob and Bev caught lots of fish before, we got some bites, some follows and some fish that stayed on for a crank or 2 but no landings. Frustration was now setting in.

But we did see this guy way up in the tree!



So we went to the glass house and made some drifts and we finally connected in a dozen perch or more, including my 1st one of the day.



This was between 11 and noon. Water temp was just starting to creep over 65df.

George asked if I was hungry so we "beached" the boat on a tree branch and George brought out the goodies!



Man, this thing weighed near a pound and it was GOOD!

After lunch, I wanted to try another new area for me and George immediately connected, as did I. I just rested the boat against a bulkhead and we proceeded to catch 10-12 perch each. Some nice 10"ers in the mix.

Now, time to move to another spot.

As soon as we got to this cove, George connect again and we proceeded to catch many a perch. Water temp was now 68df and the fish were biting better...and staying hooked, sometimes.

I even caught a crab!



This was the best spot of the day but it was getting late so I told George that we were gonna go but would hit another bulkhead on the way out.

I got a nice red!



And George got lunker perch!



We were satisfied that we had figured them out. Very slow roll of the spinner bait...get tapped and try to "feed" it to them. Once we got the hang of it, fish came over the side much easier.

The hits today were very subtle. We had many hits and had some hooked fish that we missed. More than on a usual trip.

We felt that we did great despite the conditions (no TM, too much wind, cold water) but I think this marks the beginning of the end of shallow water perch fishing for this year.