Unfortunately, there are only 24 hours in a day, and we have to spend at least 6-7 of them sleeping. I’m grateful for a good night of sleep, but what does a guy do? Dove season is on. I drew a trophy bull tag down in the Owyhees and need to be scouting all of September. I just got an invitation from Olight to go to Houston for an unveiling of their new gear and have to fly down there tomorrow morning for three days. (They make a unique flat flashlight with a lot of features). I had to submit seven articles last week and had a short (Very, very short) eBook I had to get submitted to Amazon Kindle.
But I’ve been dying to get up perch fishing on Cascade at least once more before hunting season takes over. I was set to get all of my adult responsibilities completed before my trip to Houston, but the next thing I knew I was kidnapped by my neighbor Dave Kohler, and Don Reid and we were in a spaceship headed to our secret hole. Well, maybe it wasn’t a spaceship, but it was in a big pickup peeling out of town before daylight on 2-wheels with boat in tow.
You could argue that Perch are the second-best eating freshwater fish, second only to walleye. (Although bluegills may give them a run for their money). We were soon flailing the water at our fish hole. We got a few, but it wasn’t anything hot and heavy, so we jumped to another spot.
This hole livened up. We started catching quite a few, and quite a few of them were nice. We kept bouncing down the shoreline and kept getting into a new school. I threw back between 12-15, so I assume that between us, we threw back 40-50 small ones, but most were keepable (Is that even a word) and about 1/3 were pretty decent.
For bait/lures, here’s what has worked best for me the last couple of trips. I’m using 1/8 oz. jig. If it is windy, you may want to go a little heavier. I’m not sure that the color matters. I put on a 2 ¼-inch Lake Fork Lure Co. plastic jig. I like their white or silver lures. I get a lot more hits if I tip it off with a 1 ½-inch piece of nightcrawler. I’m sure worms would work just as well or better, but all I had were nightcrawlers.
When crappie fishing, I’ll use the same plastic for an hour even when we’re netting 100 fish (Between three of us) per hour, but on this trip I had four get ripped in half. So load up on the Lake Fork Lure Co. plastics.
We did net four nice sunfish. Gee, were they good eating, maybe a hair better than the perch. I had one big hit on my 4’6” lightweight Ugly Stick. I mean a big hit. My first thought was that I had a trophy-sized perch, which is why everyone fishes there, but within 10 seconds I go, no, what the heck did I hook. It was fighting big time. It took a run and I got it turned back to the boat. I only had 4 lb. test, so I couldn’t hoss him much. I told Dave to toss me the net. He took a couple of runs under the boat, and I had to hold my rod way out so he wouldn’t snap off the tip.
I finally got him up, and Dave netted him. It was a nice rainbow. Don figured her at 25 inches. We took a few pics and then let her back in. I was worried for a bit, but Don kept working, and she finally got revived and shot on back down to the bottom.
We fished for a good while, then the time came to head home. We got home late, so we threw ice on them and filleted them out the next day. If you’re filleting out a cooler of fish, it’s a killer to fillet them by hand. If you haven’t made the switch to electric knives yet, you really should. My favorite is the old Green/Yellow Mister Twister knife. They’re economical but are the best ones I’ve tested so far. I’m getting hungry thinking about them. I think I’ll go fry up a few fillets before I hit the sack.
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