Thread: Windy Yellow Perch

Well after talking about it for a couple years my wife and I finally planned a fishing weekend to target the big February Yellow perch. We were on the water by 10:30 Saturday morning braving the 25+ wind gusts in the Nucanoe Frontier. Water tempeture was 53-54 degrees. We began the day blind casting promising looking areas in 6 and half foot. A couple small bites early by no hookups. My wife caught a decent pickeral in the second spot, I caught a 11 inch largemouth in the third spot, but no perch were boated in the morning. Wind made it impossible to fish spots by anchor so we decided to long line the afternoon. Finally we put two little 6 inch yellow perch in the boat around 1:30-2:00. Between 3:00 and 4:00 a keeper bite started in 7.5 to 8 feet of water. 4 keeper raccoons in the cooler, the largest being my wife's which was 12 3/4 inches and had great color. Fish were all caught on 1/16 jigs with curly tails in parrot color and another one I can't remember the name, light orange tail Green/blue body.
Sunday the winds were even stronger so we opted to fish a small lake that I have great luck with crappie. Got some minnows and fished the afternoon. It was very tough fish were not holding in their normal February spots, the occasional white caps weren't helping anything. Caught a 12 and 14 inch bass where the crappie should have been. Ended up moving into the only cove that had a little wind break. The wind had created a current pushing out the back edge of the cove into the main body of the lake at a drop, that's where I floated my cork at about 6 feet deep. I was rewarded with a 10 inch crappie, then an 11 incher. I threw back in the same spot one more time, and I said my cork is moving just a little different this time, wife said its just the wind, minute later it shot out of sight and I reeled in my personal best yellow perch, a behemoth 14 inch girl. They ate great, may have to give em another go next weekend.

Man, that's nice. I've been trying to find them on my local lake here in GA. What sorts of places in a lake would one look for them this time of year? I've probably put in 15 hours trying to find them this month and caught only one.