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 What is it with those perch pullin' freaks???? 

I was 10 minutes from the landing and decided to drop some gas in the boat. When out of the stop and rob walks a dude with cut off shorts, sleeves cut off his shirt and summer teeth. The first words out of his mouth were, "you goin' fishin'?" and I thought to myself, nope just takin' my boat out for a drive. I was cordial and says yep, he says "the perch are hittin' by preston." I said oh, I don't fish for perch. He says, "what, that's the best eatin' fish there is." I said, "why would I want to catch a perch, when there's walleye to be had?" He said "well the walleye bite is pretty slow right now, and the perch are hot." I just kept pumpin' gas and he looks at my rig and says, "you trollin'?" I said yep, he says Ohhhh, well take care, and off he went. I mean really what is up with perchers, it's like perch are the only fish in the lake. I'll keep one if it's decent size but there's no way I'm going to run 2 hours to catch perch.

So after I got put in, I noticed the waves were almost as big as they were last week so I used the same game plan. Head NW far enough to get a good couple hour SE troll. Well, not only did that work it worked too well, I could've been done by 9:17am and I only got started at around 8. So I did the smart thing and started culling my catch only fish over 19" were going to be able to make the truck ride home. It took me a little longer to make limit but I finally did around noon. Funny thing is I threw back at least a limit and a a half, going for bigger fish. All I could keep thinking was, "the walleye bite is pretty slow." Good thing it wasn't hot or I would've been done when I dropped the boat in the water.

 Bonus perch and white bass.

The white bass went back, the perch did not. 

Here's a really quick video.

 

So I was done by noon got home by 3 and had to deal with the wasp infestation in the mud room again. I knew it was imminent but there was nothing really I could do until they bored through the dry wall in the ceiling. So, Tuesday I worked and mowed and killed more wasps. Wednesday I packed my small lake and musky gear and headed to a small lake 45 minutes from the house. I wasn't going to fish all day but I did go until 4pm. I didn't catch a musky but the bass I caught froggin' were huge.

 

These are the same fish

This guy only went 'bout 3 pounds.

Now this guy went 4 and a half

 

This was the fish that let me know there were smaller fish in the lake too.

All in all it was a couple of awesome days fishing, can't wait for next week.

Like Corey would say, "It's like take a kid fishing day."

 Ron and I headed over to Erie on Monday, this was suppose to be the better of the days. When we got there I wasn't impressed, when it was suppose to be flat it was in fact pretty bumpy. We dropped the boat in and made the long wet haul NW against the waves. Once we got to were I thought we would get a long troll with the waves we turned and started setting poles. The night prior when I texted Ron the start time, he asked what he should bring, I responded nothing but a lunch. Well, since he fishes Erie quite a bit he said he would like to bring his big Erie tackle box, which he did. That being said I told him the 3 rods on his side of the boat are his to run. After we had only been running for a half hour or so Ron reeled in his first walleye of the day, and promptly lodged a treble into his pants. Needing the lure in the water I cut off the hooks and put a new hook on the lure. Well long story short after 5 hours, 2-three pole tangles, one with a fish on the line, which we did land, and a pretty heavy sort of shorts. We finally landed a really nice one to make our limit of 12 fish, most of our limit sadly was made up of "stretchers". Pretty good ending for a pretty nasty beginning.

4th trip to Erie

 This trip was pretty crazy, I left the house Monday at 4am on 20E to Erie. On the way over there I only passed 3 or 4 vehicles, that includes big rigs. Now, on a normal day this road even at that time, is really busy. Even Toledo let me pass with little to no traffic I just kept thinking, "I'm the last man on earth". I stopped at the bait shop for a couple lures, and there were 5 cars there, the most I've seen the whole trip. When I got up to pay I asked what was going on? Where is everyone? Well come to find out the 4th was observed on the 5th. Well holy crap if I knew that I would've waited 'til Tuesday to go fishing.

Well there was no turning back now, so on to the lake. 

When I got there it too was deserted for the most part, there were a couple of us putting in but nothing terrible. I did some research before leaving the house and found out approximately where the fish were and what they were hitting on. So I started up the kicker started my troll and it wasn't until the afternoon when the masses showed up. And man did they show up, I was in 2-3 footers and it wasn't from the wind. There were boats everywhere and not just small boats but really big boats, man is there alot of money on that lake. The walleye's I was catching weren't the 24's I was used to and I even had quite a few shorts, but I finally made a limit out of the 16 inchers and a jumbo perch that I had been dragging for I don't know how long when I cleared my lines.

It is a pretty nice mess of fish and I was going to have a meal Monday but had to get to bed to work on Tues. I was going to have a meal yesterday but then is started to rain. So I was going to have a meal today and it started to rain. The only fresh fish I have had this year I had when I was on vacation, I really need to get this worked out. There's nothing better than a meal of fresh fish after a hard day fishing.

Rain, $$ and a rock bass

 Since it was supposed to rain early on Monday and Tuesday I went into work on Monday and then did my house stuff on Tuesday. The rain was going to roll in Wednesday afternoon or so. So I decided to get up early and head out for a little fishing trip. When I went out to turn the truck around the door locks wouldn't work. Hmmm?? that's not good, so I got the key out and opened the door and the interior lights were really dim. None of my dash was lit up and the start button wasn't even lit....crap dead battery. So I got the battery charger hooked up put the hood down a little and headed inside as it charged. I went out to check it a little later to find it was fully charged but only 6V were showing. Tried to start it... no good then the rain started, it poured then stopped then poured some more while the battery was charging again. After a couple hours I had to face the obvious, time for a new battery. 200 dollars and a half hour later I had the truck started and turned around ready to go fishing. After a quick check of the weather I thought it would be ok to go after 3pm. I finally got to the lake at 3:46, fished for a couple hours, caught one rock bass and called it a successful day fishing.

Sure hope next week is a little better.