Thread: Monticello 12-26-18

I thought that was you down toward the power plant. I was in my jonboat just pass you next to the boundary about 10:30, stayed on that spot for 2 1/2 hours and caught over 50 perch and never moved. That’s the best spot I’ve had since I’ve been fishing there!! They are loving the Kastmaster Rattling 1/4 oz. Gold spoon. Sorry I didn’t give you a holler but I was afraid they’d quit biting if I didn’t fish fast.

We saw you but didn't recognize you it that boat.

I tried several spoons but none worked very well. Looks like I need to find the one you are using. Usually, we can do ok with minnows but they did work either. The rattling could be making the difference, especially, since beating on the boat seems to stir them up. When I cleaned the cooler out, I found several small shad about 1" that the perch had thrown up. Appears that the perch are wanting very small baits. I should have tried some small white crappie jigs on a drop shot rig.

We did not mark anything that looked like cats on the bottom. Our last several trips for cats have had bad results.

With all the rain that coming our way & some work that I will be helping with next week, I don't know when we will get back down there.

The spoon on the left is the one I’ve had good success with. I dipped the one on the right I dipped a silver in chartreuse blade dip, gonna try it Sunday.
Both are 1/4 oz.


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me -- perch fox and brer rabbit made the hike to Monticello Wednesday
and did better then last time we went. caught around 75 perch a few cat fish
couple bass and 3 loons lol (yup loons ) one of um spooled perch fox lol
brought home 31 for couple meals threw all rest back including loons.
they bit slow but pretty steady
hope you do better next time Charles

I got to get time to get down there. Them 1 lb. perch can be a blast on ultra lite stuff.

they are a ton of fun John not like wylie and wateree where you fish 3 days and catch 3 =1 pound fish don't take a whole lot of um to fill up a gallon bag of fillet

Mr Charles, I noticed you mentioned not marking many cats on the bottom. It's been a good while since i fished Monticello but one thing I found on that lake is the cats spend a lot of time suspended out in open water around bait schools there. I never caught any monsters, 25 pounds or so was as big as I caught there but to produce numbers we would very slowly drift with cut bait at various depths.

I fished Murray on Thursday and the perch were pretty good there too. Got a cooler full of nice keeper perch and probably 20 stripers (only one keepr sized one) plus plenty of throw back perch...all jigging. It was a fun day.

Thanks
Next time, we will spent some time out over the real deep water looking around. In the past, we have drifted the deep water & done pretty good during the summer. Seems like something has changed the cat bite over the last couple of years. We don't do as good as we used to.

Good to hear that the perch & stripers are biting on murray. It's about another 30 minutes drive for us to get to Dreher Island. May head down that way some time later next week. Maybe the water will clear up a little by then.