Time to Downsize?

[Mark]

This spring has not been traditional in terms of our weather. A cold April and rainy May have disrupted normal patterns in tidal and freshwater.

I believe one of those disruptions has been with white perch. I've been out a couple of times in the past week and have yet to catch more than I can count on one hand per session. Admittedly the water has been stained and full of debris. Conditions have not been optimal.

Yesterday John Rentch and I launched from Downs Park on perch missions. Neither of us caught many perch, but John caught twice as many as me. He was using a Beetle Spin and I was mostly using one of my hand-tied perch spinners. It's the larger spinner in the photo below:

small spinners.jpg

Now that spinner style has caught hundreds of perch for me over the years -- stripers too. But it attracted only one perch yesterday.

So, on my next perch session, I'm going to downsize to something about the same size as John's Beetle Spin. This morning, I rooted through my jig box and found two candidates for dressing. I quickly tied up the two spinners you see at the top portion of the photo. Also, I added smaller spinner blades to them than I normally use.

I'll see if a smaller, less noisy bait has more success.

Just curious if others are also finding white perch less plentiful than normal thus far this spring.

[mchottie]

Downsize? Ready to sell that Ultimate 14? Oh you meant lure size!

Thanks for the info on Downs Park, I may head that way this weekend on a whim.

[Mark]

Downsize? Ready to sell that Ultimate 14? Oh you meant lure size!

Thanks for the info on Downs Park, I may head that way this weekend on a whim.

Ha ha. Not yet Michael. My new Hobie will hit the market long before either Ultimate does.

Send me a note if your whim allows. I'm only 3 miles from the new launch.

[J. Rentch]

Those spinners look like they should do the trick. It was one of few days that I outfished you, usually it’s the reverse. Do like the new county launch at Down’ s Park. Something for Anne Arundel residents to be proud .

[brianisoutside]

Maybe it’s just a matter of matching the hatch so to speak. If all the minnows in the creeks haven’t really grown much due to the weather setbacks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[ronaultmtd]

This spring has not been traditional in terms of our weather. A cold April and rainy May have disrupted normal patterns in tidal and freshwater.

I believe one of those disruptions has been with white perch. I've been out a couple of times in the past week and have yet to catch more than I can count on one hand per session. Admittedly the water has been stained and full of debris. Conditions have not been optimal.

Yesterday John Rentch and I launched from Downs Park on perch missions. Neither of us caught many perch, but John caught twice as many as me. He was using a Beetle Spin and I was mostly using one of my hand-tied perch spinners. It's the larger spinner in the photo below:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]23390[/ATTACH]

Now that spinner style has caught hundreds of perch for me over the years -- stripers too. But it attracted only one perch yesterday.

So, on my next perch session, I'm going to downsize to something about the same size as John's Beetle Spin. This morning, I rooted through my jig box and found two candidates for dressing. I quickly tied up the two spinners you see at the top portion of the photo. Also, I added smaller spinner blades to them than I normally use.

I'll see if a smaller, less noisy bait has more success.

Just curious if others are also finding white perch less plentiful than normal thus far this spring.

We got in on a few Monday in the Slower Lower, Mark...nice big 11 inch perch...Manny caught one trolling for Stripers...but no concentrations of them yet...looks like everything is about a month behind last year...except those damn CNRs...fishing has been tough..I have used everything in my bag of tricks...like today..the SMOG crew- Big Mike, Yak67 and I hit the Slower Lower at 5:30 launch...Mike got the first fish then the first CNR...I went without a strike for three solid hours...finally pulled an Olive colored Rapala SubWalk out of my tackle box and caught a nice legal Striper, since it was on a barbless Owner single hook and in good shape I released it...caught 2 more before I followed Big Mike’s lead and hooked into a Greyhound bus headed south in the passing lane on my lightest tackle- a Stradic CI4(+) 2500 with 10# braid on a seven foot medium Light action mojo inshore St Croix rod...after a grueling fight to get the CNR boatside getting the lure back was pretty easy with barbless hooks...that was it for me..headed home...

[john from md]

We need to come up with a way to train CNR's so they can pull us in a direction that we want to go.

[Mark]

It's a bad start to the year when CNRs are as common as perch.

I hooked three of those devils last year. One took an expensive X-Rap in the Severn. Of course, I had modified the lure with in-line hooks and dressed the back hook with bucktail.

But the worst was hooking two CNRs simultaneously while trolling at Goodhands. That was a mess. On that occasion I lost only two inexpensive homemade jigs. But I spent a long time afterward untangling my lines and retying leaders with double uni-knots while bouncing in the wind and waves -- not an easy task.