Went in the evening off the west shore, just before sunset. Still a lot of power boats playing. This was to be our second test with the Pugly Perch Bugs and with hanger shots (per Pats instructions) rigged dropshot style with bigger perch and smallmouth as the plan.
I left all the hanger shots on the table - so we went to an area that I knew had some less rocky base out past the rocks and used split shot as the drop shot weight. Lures were strictly Pugly Perch bugs tied to be about 4-9 inches off the bottom and tipped with a small piece of crawler.
Cookie had the best success with a yellow body bug that had some sparkly bling as legs. I fished a beetle, black shell with cream body and yellow or black legs. We both caught well over 30 perch before sunset. Cookie caught two honest 12 inchers and we both caught some 11 and 10 inch perch - it was sure nice to see some real size for a change. Of course the ,majority were in the 6-9 inch range. It was a great evening. I actually kept perch and ate them. I love eating them but hate the knife work to get enough fillets.
depth was 9 ft to 32 ft - I did not write down the temp
We caught them just letting the bug sit and a bit of wave action to create movement, but Cookies best fish, and mine, were caught doing a very slow reel in dragging and bouncing the bugs. Hits were very aggressive. No light biting perch today.
No smallies showed up. Wave action was pretty high with power boats running hard but the perch did not seem to mind.
Nice job on the perch! I used to hate the knife work until I got an electric. Now I can buzz through a batch of panfish pretty quick. They fillet easier than most other varieties and you know the tasty results.
Looks like ice fishing is going to have some big perch to pursue at a few different lakes this year.
Great video and report. Glad to see those pugly perch jigs are working well for you.
For fathers day this year my bride picked up a fillet table and an XPS brand cordless knife for me. I’m not sure what the deal was but I think she got 1/2 off on the table if she bought the knife. The knife has been put to test on crappie, wipers, cats, perch, and blue gill. There are three blades in the set.
I’m sure the Bubba knife is a bit better and more ergonomic, but this one does the trick.
Pat, love to meet up somewhere to see your buzz saw tools. We are pretty flexible as to where / when as I am on the tail end of the house project and my heath has improved a bit - allowing a bit of get away time.
I will be hitting Echo soon to see if I can find those crappie
And we plan on chasing cats hard the next few weeks
I have been using electric knives to fillet since I took my moms carving knife out of the kitchen for a test spin over 40 years ago. There were not a lot of options back then. Now, as mentioned above there are lots of good ones. Both battery and plug in models. I have used most all of them. You can also buy inverters to plug in to cigarette lighter (harbor freight has some for under 10 bucks, so you can use your plug in model in boat or by vehicle or anywhere you have an adapter to plug it into. ( you can buy those adapters to put on portable batteries as well.)
One of my favorites is still the Green and Yellow Mr. Twister Electric fillet knife. Not too spendy and I have had them last for years, I have burned through only a few of them over 30 years, since I got the first one from the Store where I worked, but many thousands of fillets over many seasons before they give out. I use them on Bottom fish from the ocean, Stripers and all of the fish in Powell down to small panfish. The newer Mr. Twister ones have a sharpened chisel tip that is great for starting the cut on heavy scaled fish like stripers and works great for popping out cheek meat on walleye. Once you get good at it even small panfish are no problem and you can make short work of a big pile of fish.
I have a video from a while back a buddy and I made, I can’t get it to load to post it here. In a nutshell the clip is 54 seconds long and 3 walleye were filleted in that time. We often have one person fillet and skin with an electric and the other take ribs off with a regular fillet knife, it is easy to take the ribs off with electric as well.
I can go through a batch of 40 perch in under 15 minutes no problem. Once you get the hang of it is a great way to go for panfish and other fish. About the only time I use a standard fillet knife anymore is for Kokes, they are so easy and quick no need for the electric although it works fine for that too.
Try it you will like it once you get good with it, It only takes a little practice.
Mildog out
Thanks Josh for the update, I was thinking the bash was this coming weekend… Are the crowds still massive for the gorge that weekend? I can’t believe it’s this late in the ice season already… Man we’re about done with ice and it just started… Thanks for the update… Jeff
I have been saying I was going to buy one of the battery heated jackets for some time now as I seem to be much colder these days than in my youth. Anyone have an opinion these jackets.
You know, I am not really sure what the crowds were like, as we didn’t go to Buckboard or the Confluence. We checked our fish in at the rodeo grounds in Manila. Check in was from 8-10am, and Sunday morning we were there just after 9am. They told us that only five other teams had checked in that morning. Whether it was five teams at the rodeo grounds or over all, I can’t say.
The UDWR told me that they lowered their size limits for big fish and small fish because the average size overall is trending smaller.
I am on of those guys that wishes they weren’t villainizing the lake trout. I understand increasing the limit on pups, but I expressed my opinion to the gal taking the survey at check in that my belief is that when they have a no-limit on pup macs, and state that they can be disposed of like non-game fish, I feel that people are going to treat the resource with less respect, and that more of the trophy class fish that take time and resources to get that big are going to take a hit as well.
Anyway…
Josh,
Thanks for posting the results, looks like a pretty good amount pulled out but hard to make a dent in them! Hopefully people are continuing to pull them out after the event as well.
Thanks again,
Mildog out
Went to Flaming Gorge this weekend to participate in the Burbot Bash. Was able to squeeze in about an hour of mac fishing in the boat before switching to burbot, and one dude on our boat hooked a dandy! Didn’t tape or weigh, but I would venture a guess at 40" and at least 25lbs.
We jigged around the pipeline area against rock walls with the typical glow stuff tipped with sucker meat. We only boated maybe a dozen fish the first night before calling it at about 9pm.
Snowed Friday night and Saturday morning, so we switched gears to avoid and icy ramp disaster. We ice fished a cove in the same area, from 20-60’ depth. One dude caught two nice bows about thirty seconds apart from each other in the afternoon. Started catching burbot around 5pm, but there was no consistent bite. Between the 3 of us we iced less than 10.
There was no size to any of these fish. The biggest caught was from the boat, and it was what I would have called the average size two or three years ago. You know, 30" long and 2lbs kind of thing. Most of the fish were small.
I talked to a DWR person when we were checking in the fish, and they confirmed that the average size is way down, which they say shows that the efforts in the reduction are working.
All I know is I can’t handle the cold like I used to could. These folks that can pull an all nighter bouncing holes and not having to shack up (which you really need to do to effectively burbot fish through the ice) can have it!
