This my friends is a tale of two times. The best of times, the worst of times. Also a lesson of greed. As most know, Oneida has a perch limit of 50 perch. You should know I got out on Oneida at the East end a little late, but dropped my first line in the water by 9:30. Alas, all was not lost. I started smacking jumbo perch right off the bat. Eleven, twelve and even 13 inch perch. Ah, yes the best of times. I'm actually catching (2) 12 inchers at a time. By 11 o'clock I had actually accumulated 27 huge monsters, none less than eleven inches. Assuming this frenzied bite to continue, I started throwing some of my 10 inchers back knowing sure well I could keep my limit of larger 12"s and 13"s should my luck continue.
Now, for "The Worst of Times" It seems the perch have a built-in time clock. At 11:00 as fast as the frenzied bite had started, it ended. In short, I spent the next 4 hours trying to get back "the bite". You can probably guess where this story is going, right? In the next 4 hours I only added 4 more keepers, the largest was 9 inches, lamenting all those 10 inchers I threw back in the morning. LESSON LEARNED. A fish in the boat is worth ten in the water.
