A startling discovery at VBL

I know the perchmaster is going to be thrilled by this discovery, but Gord was less than enthusiastic. Several years ago, Mark and Kurt discovered a secret place where scads of bull perch could be caught in the spring. They said it was a great way to break up the monotony of catching lots and lots of walleyes.

Now, these perch are concentrated in an area that would not allow them to go far. It’s been on my mind for some time. Why not try for these same perch in a little deeper water when I visited VBL in August? My partners Dan, Kyle, Patrick and Glenn were even more interested in catching some of these perch that they had seen on this blog. I explained that this was a spring bite, but perhaps we could make an effort to find them.

We started off on a very windy day drifting over some of the deeper spots with a little success.

The perch bite is on!

You will notice that Gord has added another amenity to his boats! When you reach your boat in the morning, you will be greeted with a cooler full of ice rather than having to rely on the burlap bags to keep your fish fresh.

Well, I think this will shock even the perchmaster. It turns out that the perch were basically on the same pattern that they are on in the spring….shallow and in the reeds. These fish were gorging on small leeches and crayfish. It was very difficult to keep the boat in position given the wind, but we managed to catch a respectful batch of perch. We returned to camp over rough sea’s and left Gord his present.

The work begins!

At first, Gord was none to pleased to learn that perch fishing was no longer just a spring tradition.

We soon realized that Gord didn’t mind cleaning perch so much if we kept his beer full and pitched in a bit ourselves.

The Professor and his better half Nancy are going to report back on whether or not these pesky perch bite in September!

4 thoughts on “A startling discovery at VBL

  1. I can see it now…….. “The Vermilion Bay Lodge Perch Safari”……..catch and release of course.

    Thanks Andy, I had almost blocked out the memory of that day……

  2. WTG Andy and crew.. Way to expand your knowledge and chase those perch during summertime on Eagle Lake at Vermilion Bay Lodge!!!
    Andy our friend Gord just looks THRILLED as hell to see that sink filled in summer with perch…
    Gotta love!!!!

  3. Perchmaster….there may be a few less perch for you this spring. However, from the looks of things, the population seems to be doing just fine. I am a bit baffled by why the rest of Eagle lake seems to have a lot of stunted perch. This area seems to have a nice proportion of big perch. I am also curious why there are so darn many tiny pike. You would think the big pike would be foraging on these perch? I have never seen or caught a pike that could even be considered decent. I did catch a couple of nice walleyes drifting for perch.

  4. Yes Andy some nice walleyes but the pike not only are small but they are stinky bastards to boot…
    You would think that you would run across a nice one once in a while but it just don’t happen..
    The walleye seem to be growing just fine so who knows…..

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Testimonials

On behalf of the Boyes Group, I would like to pass on our sincere thanks for hosting the Muskie Madness Week and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay at VBL and had a great time!! This was our 7th year on Eagle Lake and we have stayed at a few other lodges but VBL takes the cake hands down! You can definitely count us in for next year. I’m happy to see you post some of my pics, they turned out well. Thanks again Gord for a wonderful week of fishing and your stellar hospitality, you run a first class operation, we look forward to seeing you next year!

Trevor Benner

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