Rockman's Report/The perch are biting

[rockman]

I must apologize for the long delay between reports, Mother Nature has had Jonathan and I running or butts off between sub zero temps and wind chills in the low 40s below range over the past 7 days. It is not fun working out in those conditions especially when you are changing out 100lb propane cylinders or anything to do with being outside. We have worked hard plowing the new roads to the second reef all weekend and all week.

There were some really nasty ice fields to get through just to reach the deeper bug beds out in deeper water. It was up and down all day long and sometimes you would catch a chunk of ice that would turn the truck around, so you had to take it slow. When you have to take it so slow, going through the old snow that is now part of the upper layer of the ice and the temps are so cold, snow tends to pile up pretty fast on the windrow. You need some speed to get the snow to spread out as it gets thrown out of the plow, so that was interesting.

But we have gotten all of the main roads and most of the cross roads plowed open to 100 ft and we just have a couple of more houses to move over there as soon as we can. The banking around the houses was like trying to dig out an ice cave inside of an ice glacier. Thanks God for Jonathan and his huge pythons because he did all of the digging. It has been a pure joy to work with my son and see what I have taught him all of his life and to get it done like a professional.

Now for the fishing report, which I know many of you have been emailing me about. Here it is; the perch bite is starting to fire up just off of the second reef in 27 to 31 ft. of water and they are burping up bugs like crazy. You would pull in a perch and the hole would be full of them. There is still a pretty good walleye bite out on both of the humps at dusk and then again a dawn for about 2 hours on either side. The shallow water on the second reef from 12 to 16 ft is very good still. You just have to get set up by 2:00pm and sit and be quite and wait to reap the rewards of you patience. Fatheads and golden shiners are working for the walleyes.

The perch are already hitting on fatheads and wax worms. You may have to sort through them, but you can get a limit of some real dandies from 10 to 12 inches. The perch come through in different year classes. One school would be the smaller ones from 7 to 9 inches and then the bigger perch would come through and they are really nice a fat on the bugs they are feeding on. I am looking forward to the perch bite really turning on in the next few weeks. There are really big walleyes also out in the deeper water. There was a 29 inch and a 27 inch walleye and 2 Northern in the 39 and 41 inch class and these guys had caught in less than 3 hours after they had gotten their house moved the day before out to the deeper water on Sunday afternoon.

That is what is so cool about the deeper water; you never know what you’re going to catch. There are some huge musky’s being seen on the camera on Sunday also. It was cool to watch the video of it from the guys who had it tape recorded from the day before. So too rap things up, there is a pretty decent perch bite already and the walleyes are still being caught out on both of the humps on shiners and fatheads and we are out too the 1st reef, second reef, #1 and # 2 humps and there are still walleyes being caught out on the 17 ft sunken island. It looks like the weekend is going to be good for temps until late Saturday and then on Sunday the temps are suppose to fall of, so it is a perfect setup for a good bite as the weather starts to change.

That is it for now; I am going to go fishing in one of the new foam houses in their new spots out on the second reef.
Be safe
We will see ya
When we see ya
The Rockman