Man, this weather since the ice went out has been killing me! Ice has been gone about two weeks, but yesterday was the first chance I've been able to get out and chase some perch.
Started up near the Days River where we did good at the start of the season last year. Marked some fish, but they were very scattered. Ran up to the mouth of the Rapid, then East of Butler's Island, then north of Saunder's Point. Marked very few fish at all those spots. Ran to the south side of Saunder's and finally marked some decent numbers of fish on the graph in 30 to 40 FOW.
Anchored up and started fishing. We had fish under us pretty much all of the time, but the bite was slow. In several hours of fishing, we caught 8 or 9 perch and a couple small walleyes, and only kept 4 of the perch. Water temps were 39 to 42 degrees. It needs to warm up another 10 degrees before the fishing really heats up.
We caught fish on basic perch rigs with 2 inch fatheads, 3 inch shiners, wigglers, and chunks of crawler. There fish didn't seem to have any real preference, but the biggest fish, (a 12 incher,) bit on the crawler.