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.

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.

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!