Thread: The yellow perch were bitin' today!

I hope you got out to fish today but in case you didn't, come along with me! Ken

The weather here in CT was forecast to be 60* today so I decided to give it one more shot this year. Even in my younger days I never fished much beyond early October; after that is was time to get ready for hunting season. This year, as each warm fall day goes by I wonder how many more we'll have so I can get out "just one more time". I got all my work done yesterday in hopes of getting out today. I went back to my "new" lake I discovered a couple of weeks ago. I had the place to myself; not a single other boat on the pond. Got on the water around 9 AM. Water temp was 49*. I had a plan in mind of how I was going to fish it today and it worked pretty well, all in all. I had high hopes to boat more nice crappie like I found before but today was all small ones, 8" was about the biggest. I did keep a half dozen of the 8" with hopes of hitting the big ones later. I did land a couple nice sized yellow perch to fill things out as well.
Along around 11:30 the slow, steady action I'd had stopped like you flipped a switch. I could see them on the HB, but they were not biting at all so I pulled in and paddled around some to try to see if I could find some structure or contours other than what was listed on the map. As I rowed around I would see scattered fish throughout the water column but they weren't hitting the lures I was trolling. Here and there were some fish hugging the bottom; now and then I'd stop and jig them a bit but nadda. Around 12:15 I spotted a small group of fish at the 28' line in 30 FOW. I anchored up and dropped both a brown jig and a silver/rose bellied minnow tube over the side, rod in each hand again. The minnow tube had been a good choice so far today.
They no sooner got to the 28' line than I had a solid thump on the tube. Reeled in another perch, a pot bellied 12 incher, a jumbo for this area for sure. Dropped the tube back over and as it was dropping, another solid hit on the brown jig, another big perch. No sooner dropped that back in then another solid hit on the minnow. Big perch. I was in the midst of school of jumbo sized and very active perch, fastest action I'd ever seen. I had to go to one pole; too much action! The view on the HB was amazing! I watched my jig drop to around 25-26 feet. A black line would appear from right off the bottom and rise up to grab it and Bam! Fish on! I couldn't see them on the screen of the HB; apparently my settings aren't tweaked quite right to pick them out when they were that close to the bottom but as soon as the jig showed up, here would come the black line up to meet it. For about a half hour I had action that had me smiling and chuckling to myself like an idiot. I lost track of how many I kept but it was a bunch, 20+ for sure. What a fun day!



I did see something I've never seen before. It seemed as though the bigger fish were belching up what looked like their air bladder or something. I'm not sure what I was seeing. Would pulling up fish from 28-30' cause this? I think this is the deepest water depth I've caught fish from. I didn't see it last time from the fish I caught, but they were in about 25' max and they were crappie not perch. Any thoughts on the air bladder thing?

Forgot to mention that we have a seven inch size limit on the perch, so that's why we have to throw them back.