Several years ago, I remember having several free days with both kids at college and things caught up at home, so I would go over to Stone lake in LaPorte to fish perch. I would drift around basically trolling perch rigs with minnows and depending on the wind, drag the bottom with a modified perch rig using ice fishing jigs tipped with bee moth. My electronics back then were state of the art Lowrance x-85 and I remember seeing what I thought were schools of something on the bottom, here and there. Well, now a days, between grandkids, other priorities and sometimes just not enough gas in the tank, I rarely have free days for fishing. I do really cherish a free day when I know or have rationalized that everything is taken care of (not) in my mind and I "should" go fish. Yesterday, after church, was one of those days. I hit Stone lake to just fish some memories on my own. My electronics have changed to Garmin Livescope and I was excited to see just what I could see with this new technology. The lake in my backyard is essentially a 300 acre subdivision aquarium that has allowed me to get familiar with my Livescope system and to differentiate some things using this technology. I hit the launch at about noon and stayed out until dark. It was moderately windy and the water temp at the surface was 33 degrees. I fished as deep as 40' of water and as shallow as 20' and I would stop on a spot for 20 minutes using the spot lock on the minn kota. I caught perch at all locations/stops. I did not catch a perch over 6". The live scope was very interesting in the sense that i was using a small rapala jigging minnow in silver/blue tipped with a bee moth and I would hover this thing about 6" off the bottom. It did not take long, as seen on the livescope, for a heard of fish to show up under and around the jigging rap. I would slowly raise the jig and you would have a few brave ones follow, follow, follow. I did catch a fair number of very small perch. My conclusion for the day was that Stone is loaded with a large number of small perch. I know there are nice perch there but they were too elusive for me yesterday. I clearly remember, several years ago, with drifting around and catching a large number of perch in the 8-11" range. The other fun thing I did was take a transistor radio I have had since high school along and listened to the Bears/Vikings game. It was actually fun to listen to the game and fish. Arriving home, my wife asked me - well, how many people were out fishing today? The answer was 1. Looks like with the upcoming cold weather on the horizon, the next soft water fishing will be either the ditch or to go over to Cal Park and get another limit of easy perch. Thanks for reading and I hope and pray that you all have a peaceful, healthy, Christ filled Christmas as we leave this year of opportunity and look forward to the next...
