Perch Report: Sat. 7-14-12

If a hotline existed to report perch missing I would have called it this morning! First I'll say that we have been doing well up until this morning. Just a couple days ago we caught 17 nice keepers with the largest being 14 inches. We also enjoyed landing bonus walleyes, smallmouth bass, and a 10 pound catfish. We had just 3 hours to fish this morning, and we could not put the pieces of the puzzle together to make a decent catch.

Our normal strategy is to slowly cruise around, looking for fish on the locator, then anchoring over them to try some of our proven presentations. For the past couple weeks that has been tough because we have been marking huge schools of baitfish suspended off bottom. When that happens, we look for "fish marks" close to bottom or even a reading like a "bumpy bottom" where the fish are one foot or less above the lake floor. Usually we can anchor there for a while to see what bites. We move on if all we find are gobies, rock bass, suckers, or something other than perch. Today, we simply ran out of time. We could not find the perch.

During the past two weeks, we have been working the west shore breaklines from Gladstone south to the Municipal docks in Escanaba. As I said, today we were marking lots of fish, but finding schools of perch among the baitfish was tough. We worked water from 10 to 35 feet. They seem to have lots of natural forage and are not too hungry. I've been doing this a long time however, and I know from experience, you can bomb out one day and go like gangbusters the next. You simply have to put your time on the water. Get out there, troops! Carry out your mission! Find those fish and bring them up at least long enough for them to check the registration numbers on your boat before you toss them back. One bad day won't stop us!