Good evening... I changed my mind... Perch fishing was outstanding today on the big pond as was the company. Holy Cow! When we arrived this AM at 5:15 in Portage, you would have thought they were giving something away for free as the parking lot was packed and rigs were stacked up on the gravel parking area. The fog was incredibly thick and I thought for a second to just head home. But what the heck... you spend a lot of dough for these fance electronics with trails and all the bells and whistles so we launched and slowly made our way down the ditch. You truly could not see very far in any direction so you just moved very slow and careful. We fished the mouth of the ditch for maybe 30 minutes and did not catch any and saw none caught. I started studying my electronics and noticed on my charts, I had trails that headed to the east where I usually go in front of the state park. So, I thought, let's trust the electronics and proceed cautiously east. Again, visibility was really limited and as I navigaged following the dotted trail on the Garmin, I started to get more courage. Pretty soon, I am on plane and cruising cautiously along. I just get past the mouth of the port, according to the gps and I hear this very close, incredibly loud fog horn. Yes, that was pretty scary and I made sure I stayed pretty close to the rock wall areas cause I figured those big boats or barges or whatever would not get close to the walls. So, about the time we got to the donut, the fog had breaks in it here and there and the rest of the day was a breeze. I had my buddy Ralph (95 yo) with me and we went to where I was yesterday, in front of the state park beach. Saw nothing on the sonar in 35' of water and slowly worked towards shore with the minn kota. Harvested 6 nice perch on that drift but they were very few and far between. There were no other boats around so I called my son who was fishing the mouth of the ditch and he had 25. The ride back to the ditch was much more pleasant as now we could see everything and we spent the next few hours catching and sorting through to our limit of 30 for the two of us. So, today, it was the mouth of the ditch and I would guess maybe 40 boats were comfortably scattered. I saw people catching and it was really cool because there was a lot of good conversation between boats. I think people have really missed people with all the baloney we have been through over the past few years. The other joy today is to watch my 95 yo friend get too excited with each perch he catches. You would think it was his first time and he is truly an inspiration. He treats every perch like it is a T-bone and so when I dropped him off at home, I gave him all 30. I cleaned fish the last two days and have plenty for my family, so why not... Another beautiful day on the water with a solid friend and good conversation with people I really don't know. The weather looks reasonably stable for the forseeable future... Get out and enjoy this resource... Final note, the 16 year old neighbor young man came by to chat this evening -- what are you doing? I'm getting ready to fry some lake perch. Oh, I don't eat fish... That's too bad... So, I made 10 nice size fillets -- just breaded and fried in olive oil on the side burner of the grill. As I was taking them out of the skillet, he was "sampling" them. Final score... Neighbor boy who doesn't eat fish 6 and homeowner 4. I think he likes fish now and wanted to know when we can go...
