Perchin on Simcoe Report (in the cold and rain)

April 16, 2011

So, we had planned on doing some perching on Simcoe with Sir, Kakka, My Best Friend's Girl and myself on Saturday, April 16, 2011.  However, the night before, My Best Friend's Girl mysteriously fell ill, and so we brought in a sub - Knot'Yo.  The weather that morning was cold and windy.  All day, the weather hovered around 5 degrees Celsius.

We left Sir's place around 4 am, and arrived at Harry's Riverside Sports and Bar in Keswick around 6 am.  The sun had not broken the horizon yet, and we launched in the dark.  We could already feel the cold wind off the lake.  I was glad I had worn my snowboarding jacket at that point.

We started fishing the eastern shore of Cook's Bay in about 10 ft of water.  I started out using a small jig and spinner tipped with a soft plastic tube.  I was fishing it slowly along bottom.  The other guys were using minnows and worms.  At this first spot, we caught nothing.  We moved to another spot with similar conditions, and remained skunked.

Sir likes the challenge of a bobber in gale force winds...

Knot'Yo braving the cold

Yellow Kakka... must have had corn the night before...

We finally got to the top of Cooks Bay, and rounded to corner to stronger winds.  We located ourselves between Snake Island and the mainland in about 8 ft of water with weedbeds surrounded by sandy bottom, and anchored.  At this point, I had switched to a modified dropshot rig where my weight was a jighead tipped with a minnow, with another hook tied about 20 inches above, also tipped with a minnow.  I dropped my rig in and bam!  Fish on!  I reel her in and bring in a nice Simcoe perch!  I got the skunk off and we were then in business. 

At this point, the rain starts, and we begin to get wet!  Because of the rain, I could not take anymore on the water pictures, so I will describe it to you.  All in all, we caught somewhere around 150 perch between the 4 of us, including some really nice jumbos, the largest of which is credited to Knot'Yo - it looked like a bass lol.  Some of these fish were really fat, and obviously pregnant.  One even oozed out what looked like thick Mountain Dew when Kakka squeezed the poor preggers fish.  It was all over our chairs.  Disrespect...  We ended up keeping 26 for the pan.

I eventually stopped using live bait due to my fingers freezing in the water, and switched to soft plast tubes on my rig.  The soft plastic proved just as effective as the live bait for me, and I used it for the rest of the afternoon.

Eventually, we headed back to Harry's to warm up and grab some food.  White caps were beginning to form on the lake, and the drive back was much slower than the drive out.  It was not a fun drive back.  When we got home, we took some pics.

 Don't be fooled by the pic, that fish was jumbo, just not as jumbo as the guy holding it...

So, according to my goals, I started using soft plastics, and used soft plastics for a large portion of the fishing day (although not 50%).  So far so good.