Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The fish are biting again

If you call Bluegills, Sunfish and Crappies, all Perch.

Well then what do you call a real perch?

Ha! My lawn is usually shin deep and my house and shop are an ongoing project. But we always catch lots of fish . One of my shortcomings I suppose but as long as my bills are paid I’ve been known to shirk my duties to hit the fishing hole.

Easy, them weird striped fish they have up at the in-laws place in SD . I don’t think we have any yellow perch within a couple hundred miles of here though I have caught a few while visiting in SD and once at a lake in CO where I had no earthly idea what they were, I was just certain they weren’t the trout I was fishing for. Edit: and crappie are just crappie around here, some places I’ve been they’re white perch but not around these parts.

Yeah, these;

Beautiful day here so we loaded up the skiff and headed to our flood control pond. We don’t get up there nearly as often as we should but always make it a point to go when the crappie are getting ready to spawn. Pond is about 8 acres and loaded with crappie, some up to nearly 3 pounds.

It took us a while to find them but about 7:15 we got into them and it was game on. Fishing double maribou jigs, one white and one black and yellow jigged vertical around timber and hydrilla patches. About an even split on which color we caught them on. Ended up catching about 25 or so and all but 3 were between 10-14”, good slabs. I kept the eggs, I love them fried with the rest of the fish. Ended up with a pretty good mess of fish. When I was cleaning them several of the bigger females had whole perch about 3” long in their bellies, I’ve never found anything bigger than minnows in crappie so found that interesting.

I’ll hang some pics tomorrow since Postimage seems to be down at the moment.

Here we go.


Basket full of fatties.

Coldern crap here today, had snow flurries yesterday and highs in the mid 40’s today with a north wind. But me and my faithful sidekick donned out coveralls and loaded up the boat anyway.

Caught a pretty good mess of slab crappie, most of them jigged up around structure.
Big guy had to use his mom’s 9 1/2 foot jigging rod since she wasn’t there and he always wants to use a grownup pole. He made out alright.
Blue was the color this afternoon, we caught crappie, bass, about as big a bullhead as you’ll find around here, and a 4lb channel cat on 1” blue shad jigs with 1/16th oz sickle hook jig heads. Those sickles are awesome on crappie BTW, bigger gap assures that you hook them all the way through the mouth more often and keeps the ones that pull off as you lift them into the boat to a minimum.

Bullhead.

And the channel as he was about to meet his maker.
Cool thing is we were out there for 6 hours and never once did the virus enter my mind. Get out on the water and take a load off guys, it’s good for you.

Kid, cool stuff.. Really enjoy your posts.. Keep on!!

Man I'd like to catch specks again. And crappie. Its been a LONG time. We put crappie in a back tank but have never caught a single one out of the tank.

That's a great pic!!

We got after them again today, weather was much improved thankfully. Didn’t catch a whole bunch, just 8, but it helps when they look like this.
My partner is a decent photographer, for a 4 year old.
For scale that’s a size 13 Muck

Nice slab!

And yes most if not all of Oklahoma refers to sunfish as “perch”

Made me smile wide.

Thanks for this post.

I enjoyed this thread as well. Puts a smile on my face. Here's a pic from a few days ago fishing the stripers that are just beginning to run up the Sacramento. The big ones are just starting to come up and the state closed the friggen boat ramp.

Nice fishes and great kid. Thanks for sharin'.

great pics, we'll be going offshore wens or thurs.

We beat up on the crappie again yesterday evening for a couple hours. In the last 4 days we’ve boated 8 between 16 and 16.5 inches, big old slabs! We’d be back after them tonight since they be weather is about to go south on us again but I have some spraying I have to get done.
Momma went yesterday and outfished us both!
Big boy was touting the deadly Beetlespin, I think he just likes to say Beetlespin but it did work.
And a 16” and 16 1/4” on the filet board.

Still getting after the crappie, haven’t had a good year for them since we moved back and we’re making hay while the suns shining.

Got my mom and dad to load up and go with us Thursday evening, my dad’s oldest brother brought his boat and my Grandad who turned 88 this past week. We caught a pretty good basket full between the two boats.
My passengers.

Got the new motor hung Friday and me and my sidekick went to try it out yesterday. Did okay, not a ton of fish but big crappie. Also caught 3 bass over 3lb on crappie jigs, they got released to go do their thing. Motor runs like a top, going to take some getting used to since the twist throttle is backwards to the old motor but I think I’ll manage.

The best two from Saturday, that’s a 10” bladed Rapala 12v fillet knife, indispensable tool this time of year. I’d never clean another scale fish if I had to use a manual knife.

What!!!!! Gasp!!! I can’t believe how irresponsible you are. Endangering people, their are people on the front lines battling this pandemic,,,,,, and, I’m so damn beside myself,,, but here you are being irresponsible, while,, I’m trying not to cry, while we have people dying....

Ok I’m messing with you, good on you getting out their with the family, enjoying life and fresh air. Break up is happening and salmon season will be here.. need to pull last yrs stuff out and can it. Wife likes it smoked then canned..

We just took our masks off for the pic .

Is there going to be a king season this year? I miss wrassling those big bastards. Silvers in the salt were always good too. I predict that 4 years from now the salmon returns will be good, due to less lesser 48ers coming to rape and pillage due to the COVID. Good luck.