Last few time out I haven’t seen much schooling, so I’ve decided to kill some time giving the perch a try. I’ve been marking what I was pretty sure were perch in about 45’ on the bottom.
The first couple of tries I just used spoons and only picked up a handful each time, along with a 3.5 lb bass. It was frustrating seeing what I thought were plenty of perch and only catch a few, so yesterday afternoon I picked up some minnows and went to the same spots and fished 2 rods with minnows while I worked a spoon.
Same results on the spoon but got 26 on minnows. The good news is that I feel pretty sure what to look for now, but I really prefer to catch them on a spoon.
Is it typical for this time of year that the minnows would out fish the spoons by such a wide margin (was about 8/1)?
I know I’ve seen posts of people catching dozens of them on spoons, but, if I remember correctly, it seems like that is mostly in the winter months??
While you can always catch perch on spoons, live and cut bait will produce higher catch rates and bigger perch until the lake turns over and we have some freezing nights. The spoons produce best when the threadfins are cold stressed. That’s what the small spoons mimic with the vertical flutter.
I’ve seen it both ways at all times of the year. I seldom if ever fish minnows any more, but I’ve seen plenty of days when minnows, cutbait and/or worms would outfish spoons. I’ve also seen days when a minnow would hang on the hook for an hour while I was steadily winding in perch with the spoons. I just prefer to fool them with the spoons. I’ve probably got more different types, colors and sizes of spoons in my posession than a couple of the big box stores combined. I usually bump two different rods with different spoons on each when I start out to catch perch and have been known to carry atleast six perch spoon rods with me at a time. I don’t want to lose time having to tie on different spoons. I’ll almost always start with a white and silver 1/2 ounce Berry spoon and some other spoon. If I was limited to only one spoon it would be the Berry. The Cotton Cordell’s are good in either the 3/8 or 3/4 size. I keep trying different actions and spoons until I find out what will get bit the best. Heck, Fogman saw me catch a couple of nice perch on a 3 1/2 ounce striper spoon just a short while ago. If you can find actively feeding perch I think the spoons are a great bait. One problem with the spoons this time of year is that the baitfish are still pretty active and moving around a lot. I experimented last fall, by casting the spoons out and hopping them across the bottom back to the boat. Seemed to put more fish in the boat when the bite was slow or the fish were moving around a lot. One thing for sure is that you have to figure out how the perch want the spoons worked. Sometimes you have to barely move the spoons and other times you have to jerk the things like crazy to trigger a strike. If the perch are “on the feed” then you can just about work the spoons any way you want and catch them. If they are just sitting on the bottom and not active then you really have to figure out what color, size and action will trigger them to bite. One other thing… I always want the cleanest water I can find for spoon fishing. In my
… Heck, Fogman saw me catch a couple of nice perch on a 3 1/2 ounce striper spoon just a short while …
That’s what got me thinking about giving the perch a try this past weekend. Picked up this one last week jigging a 3 oz Slammer spoon. After seeing that, I thought I was gonna load the boat with them when I went back out with some small spoons.
