Perryville perch

[J.A. Veil]

Moc and I met at Owens Marina in Perryville this morning. We fished for several hours from right in front of the floating docks by the ramp to just downstream from the railroad bridge. The early bite included a few small neds. The one shown below is only about 7" long. I had another one that was even smaller, but my camera batteries failed as I prepared that photo.

As the morning progressed, we moved farther downstream on each drift. I had a half hour of steady 8" and 9" fish near the last set of docks. Martin found a nice hole downstream of the railroad bridge and got a few keepers. I saw his rod bending quite a few times.

The wind forecast was supposed to be strong, but it did not seem to be as strong as predicted. In any case, it did not hamper our efforts to fish. On the way home, I detoured a few miles to the north to stop at Herb's Tackle shop. I was tempted by a Stradic 3000 reel, but settled for a Stillwater Smackit-Jr plug.

[jet]

love the first pic, thanks for the report.

rather catch 7" than be at work

[chex]

Nice!!

[Shady]

So, nothing over 9" today? This gives me further confidence in my plan to try one of my creek spots this weekend in search of big Perch.

Glad you guys still found some fish out there biting!

[ictalurus]

Thanks for the report. I was wondering how you guys were doing as I was banging my head against my computer at work. Yellow perch are a nice catch no matter what the size.

[moc]

It was great having John to fish with. Thanks again John for the minnows. I ended up catching at least 30 fish. I got 6 keepers to take home to cook for dinner on Thurday. I had 4 other fish that were most likely keepers but they broke off just before getting them to the surface. I think they pulled so hard that they pulled the hook through their lip....Ouch!

Out of the 6 fish that I kept, 4 were females with roe, and two were males. The largest perch was 13 inches. The smallest was 10 inches. I stayed until 2pm them headed in and was on the road back home by 3pm. The larger fish that I caught were in 58 to 40 feet of water. I used the top/bottom style setup with a 1.5 ounch wieght at the bottom and two jigheads tipped with live minnow.

[chex]

Wow, nice job Moc!

Looks like they got that big ol log out of the ramp.

[MetroMan]

Nice going gentlemen.

[nay_sayer]

I need to stop reading posts like this while I'm at work, I'll end up quitting so I can fish more

Congrats on the fish gentlemen!

[Shady]

Ok, I guess there still are some nice sized ones around Perryville. Nice work on Perch!

Question: When you clean them that way, how do you cook them? When you eat them, do you just pick the meat off of the bones? I've never cleaned them that way, but have always been interested in it because it seems like there would be a lot less waste.

Are you still heading up there this weekend?

[MetroMan]

I fried mine when I used that cleaning method. You can pinch the meat and it pulls from the bones quite easily.

[J.A. Veil]

Martin had better success than me at catching keepers. I had little incentive, though. I did not plan to take any home. All the fish I had, whether little guys or the larger ones that were just over 9", were skinny, like the fish shown in Martin's first photo. I suppose they were all males.

At first I tried using two rods at once. The first rod had two hooks with live minnows and a 1-oz weight. The second rod had two hooks tipped with small soft plastics and a 1-oz weight. I caught perch on both rigs, but snagged frequently. It was a pain in the a$$ to free up one snag while the other rod dragged unattended. After losing the soft plastic rig to a snag, I settled on just a single rod -- using minnows.

[moc]

Ok, I guess there still are some nice sized ones around Perryville. Nice work on Perch!

Question: When you clean them that way, how do you cook them? When you eat them, do you just pick the meat off of the bones? I've never cleaned them that way, but have always been interested in it because it seems like there would be a lot less waste.

Are you still heading up there this weekend?

I tried cleaning them with like they showed on that 10 sec video for cleaning perch. It was different, but took me more than 10 secs per fish. I had the same experience Metroman had in that it took longer. I normally fillet them to avoid the bones. We will see how they come out.

[Metalli445]

The larger fish that I caught were in 58 to 40 feet of water. I used the top/bottom style setup with a 1.5 ounch wieght at the bottom and two jigheads tipped with live minnow.

Is this what they call the "Bottom Rig"?

[J.A. Veil]

Is this what they call the "Bottom Rig"?

I made a few rigs at home using 15-lb test mono. I started with about a 3 ft length. I tied a loop on the top and the bottom (the bottom was a bit longer) using a surgeons loop knot. Then I tied small loops at intermediate distances along the length of the rig.

I threaded the bottom loop through the eye of a sinker and dropped the sinker through the resulting loop. This allows for quick sinker changes without tying knots on the water. I used the same attachment method to connect small snelled hooks onto the two intermediate loops. I happened to have some unused snelled hooks in the garage -- that seemed like a good use for them.

I had a snap swivel on the end of the main line. I clipped that onto the top loop. That left me with a 2-ft long rig with two small hooks standing out from the main rig by 6". To those I attached either minnows or small plastic tails.

On my previous outing at Owens, I did not make up this style of rig. Instead, I used the regular wire bottom rigs that are available at any tackle shop. I used small snelled circle hooks on those rigs (my standard summer time bottom fishing rigs).