This Very Well Could Be Tied For My 2nd Favorite Time Of The Calendar Year!
I looooooove Ice Fishing, I looooooove Waterfowl Hunting, and I truly appreciate the intricacies of searching out new areas to search for Perch in the latter days of our abbreviated Summer up here n the Northern Tier of North Dakota.
For much of early Summer, Perch are an enigma. They are out there somewhere but are really difficult to locate and even tougher to catch. Not so as we enter the ole ‘Dog Days’ of Summertime. They seem to slip a little deeper, exiting their weedy safe zones and congregating on those deeper, shoreline ledges. The machine gun taps on our trolling rods alert us to their presence and the cat and mouse game of swing and a miss, let em tap-tap-tap, swing and a miss, tap tap:
Jackpot!
I think it is the overall challenge of locating and connecting on some Perch in the summer that endears me to them. Right now, Walleyes seem to be everywhere and although A LOT of them are small, putting together a Creel Basket of eater sized, 14-17 inch Walleyes is not only possible on the Big Devil in Late July and Early August, it has become an expectant event.
Limits of Eyes at the cleaning station bring nary a look up from the other anglers present. Half a bucket of mid-sized to Jumbo Perch however, will bring:
Wow, Perch!
-or-
Where did you find those!
-or-
Hey Dad, They caught some Perch!
No better feeling for an angler than being the Cleaning Station Superstar, if only for a few minutes.
How To Do It, Where Are We Finding Them?
Small Spinners in hammered Gold or anything with orange on a 1 to 2 ounce bottom bouncer in anywhere from 15-30 feet of water on a submerged flat off of a point or an old shoreline ledge running parallel to the current shoreline.
We, on average, usually run into our limit of Walleyes on accident as we cruise for these schools of Perch and up until today had put our technique to work with great success.
Today!
Sometimes you are the Dog and sometimes you are the Hydrant, at the end of the day, it’s still fishing so getting a little wet and smelly isn’t always too bad!
Today, the Big Devil got the best of us. It had assistance from a hard SSE wind that kept us from getting out o Creel Bay and we could never really get on a consistent bite. It leaves a bad taste in our mouths and we are hurriedly typing this with the anticipation that the wind is going to let up a little and we are going to go back to a couple deep ledges to try to mine some Devils Lake Gold!
