I had heard of people catching random large perch while trolling salmon spoons for steelhead. Another friend said it should be about time to find some perch so I put my head on the pillow last night convinced that if I was lucky enough to wake this morning, I'm going perch fishing. Got up at 4:30 and headed to Slez for the best minnows on the planet. Launched about 5:25 or so and headed down the ditch towards the lake. There was essentially no wind and it was just a spectacular, beautiful morning with the sun peaking through layers of clouds that resembled a venetian blind with radiance. There were only two other rigs in the lot and that is not a good indication of a strong bite going on. I knew one of the rigs as belonging to my son as he has a passion for casting for steelhead this time of year. Sure enough, I ran into him at the mouth of the ditch and he had caught one so far. Off I went, straight out to 40' of water and put the minn kota on 1/2 speed, just creeping back towards shore. In the first 30 minutes, I caught 3 gobies, one rock bass and one 9" perch - not a bad start but no significant marks on the graph. I stayed there for another 30 minutes and then headed east to the Indiana Dunes Pavillion area and again headed out to 50' of water and slow trolled back to 15' of water -- very slow trolled. Picked up a random, fat 11" perch but that was it on that 2 hour drift. I know I was not going too fast and would occasionally pick up a rod and lean it back towards the bait to make certain the rig was dragging the bottom. I fished 4 more locations from previous history of fishing out there, including the donut area and ended up with 4 perch, 3 gobies and one rock bass. So, for those interested, the perch were not too prevelant this morning but the boat ran exceptionally well and the environment was overwhelmingly beautiful.
