Lake Erie Perch

This weekend we put about 500 miles on our vehicles. Saturday Christina, the kids and Gene and I went to King's Island. Christina got free tickets from her company and had a company picnic in the park.

We got back around 10:30 Saturday night and the next morning Gene and I were up at 3:00 to drive to lake erie. Gene's brother Glenn also came with us. We had reserved a spot on a head boat from the Drawbridge Marina to go perch fishing.

They took us out close to Canadian waters. We caught quite a few perch, but only ended up keeping about 18. We found out after the trip that we should have been keeping the small ones instead of throwing them back. They just seemed so small and couldn't have had much meat on them. Eighteen fish of the size we kept was plenty for eating and will provide several meals.

As far as the fun factor goes, perch fishing is not as fun as walleye. We were using a 1 1/2 oz. weight on the spreader to reach the bottom and most of the perch we caught just felt like some added weight when you were bringing them up.

If I were to go out again, I would take an ultralight rod and a lot smaller weights to increase the fight. I would also try to figure out how to catch the great big ones. Those are fun.

We waited several hours for our fish to be cleaned once we got back and had a walleye dinner at Jolly Rogers in Port Clinton. Their dinners are awesome and come with a ton of fish, slaw and waffle fries.

Completely stuffed we went back to Drawbridge Marina and got completely schooled by Gene on how to catch fish after fish on a jighead with a piece of worm. He caught rock bass, bluegill, gobies and bullhead over and over, while Glen and I caught a gobie a piece. I also got 1 bluegill.

The fish were finally cleaned and we headed back home.