Fishing with Larry, Rudy, and Neil 7/25/2021

This was my first official all perch trip of the season, and while I was cautiously optimistic, the kid in me was excited to go perch'n.

I left the house at 5am to do a gas station stop, and hit Jeannette's Bait, over there on Catawba. It opens at 6am. That's late, for a bait shop right now, but she was the only one I called the night before, that had Emeralds for this morning. 

Everyone else said they had "dead", "frozen", or Goldies available.

My guys met me at the park, and we launched by 6:45. The ramp wasn't as busy as I thought it would be, since the day's forecast was a nice one. We headed to the Green Island area to look around, and see if we could find some perchy looking marks on the Solix screen...and, then, set up on them.

The weather was weird this morning. On land, you could still see the full moon high in the sky even as the sky lightened...but, then it clouded up with a heavy fog like cloud that eventually drifted down and surrounded us for a while. At one point, it was thick enough that by navigation rules, the navigation lights were turned on. That lasted about a half hour, I think. Then, the fog lifted, and we could see the islands again.  Our spirits lifted a bit too.

We hit three spots before finding one that we would sit on for a longer duration. The bottom was a little bit harder than the previous spots, and there were good marks on the Solix screen. We had Emerald Shiners, and a 9-year-old boy that declared that we weren't here on a "Fishing trip"...."We are here on a catching trip!" (no pressure there, eh? lol)

We had a slow bite, but it was still fun, and the size of the perch made up for the quantity caught today. Rudy was happy, and that made me happy! He's the most positive kid I've met so far. Most would have been bored, but he stayed focused, and when he missed a bite, he would just try even harder. He's pretty cool. :)

The final count was 38, I think....plus or minus one. I know we were short of 40, which was only 1/3 of the allowable catch. From what I heard on the radio, it sounded like a lot of people were struggling on the perch today. At least the ones being caught are a nice grade, and not the little bait stealing 4-5 inchers, like a couple of years ago.  I hope the bite keeps getting better as the season progresses.

We shall see....

I'm off tomorrow....then, back at it Tuesday through Saturday.

Stay tuned...

Capt Juls