East Fork Perch Derby

[chucknduck]

went up on sat.  caught about 40 kept about 20.  all little ones.  seems like the bigger ones i usually keep wernt  biting or are getting thinned out.  caught them on spoons and jigs.  they were biting great till 10 or so them slowed way down. only fished till 11.

[Fabucci]

Did you use wax worms or meal worms with the jigs?  Were they easy to find?

[chucknduck]

Started with maggots then perch eyes. Eyes work the best. They are not hard to find. There are tons of them in there I don't think any spot is better than the next. Just find 25 fow.

[Icejigs]

Chucknduck: You caught 40, threw back 20, how small were the 20 you put back and how big were the 20 you kept?

[chucknduck]

The ones I threw back were under 6 in. Kept anything over 6. I measured a few of the biggest on the fillet board they were around 7 in. They were a pain in the but to fillet but tasty. I throw back the ones that are to small for me to fillet.

[chucknduck]

Has anyone fished big casino res? I think they used to have the 2nd day of the derby there. Is the fishing as good? Size of fish the same? What kinds of fish are in there?

[CLUB 32]

Has anyone fished big casino res? I think they used to have the 2nd day of the derby there. Is the fishing as good? Size of fish the same? What kinds of fish are in there?

You are correct that they used to have the 2nd day there.  I heard that they hadn't planned to do it there this year because the fishing was pretty bad.  Then it ended up getting cut back to one day anyways due to weather.

[Bareback Jack]

The perch in Casino are not as plentyful,you can catch a some good ones in there if you find a spot.I fish just off the handi cap fishing balchoney towards the middle.They say there is walleye in there but I have never caught one in 8 years of fishing it,spring,summer,fall,winter. Lots of trout and some red tail suckers.
Good luck
BBJ

[chucknduck]

i might give it a try.  if i dont do any good i can always run over to east fork a get some small ones for dinner.

[Fabucci]

Thanks for the info.  I am looking forward to going up there.

[Fabucci]

Went on Sunday.  Did ok, nothing spectacular.  It was 20 and nice out.  It was -5 when we got there at 7:00.

I saw a lot of hand size fish, nothing that I would really consider of size.  There were 3 additional groups with quite a few people in the groups.  One group (a couple of guys from Roundup) were catching pretty much the same thing.  It was pretty consistent fishing.  It did slow down a little bit, but most of the groups were showing up between 10 and 12.

We found the fish in about 20 feed of water.  Perch eyes are the answer.  I need to remember to bring smaller hooks for smaller fish or use larger hooks and only catch the larger fish.

Roads in and out were fine.

[chucknduck]

yea ive caught a few hundred fish out of there this year and only one big one about 11inches.  glad you got into a few of them.  you can catch tons just not a lot of big ones. its a great place to take a kid. i was going to go up on sunday but the weather report in the morning scared me off.

[Fabucci]

It was snowing when we left early in the am.  Got a little worried.  It stopped around Roundup.

Trying to decide where to go this weekend.  May make one last big trip.

[RustyWaterDogs]

What is the ice looking like?  Thinking about going there this weekend.

[Fabucci]

The ice was 15" where I drilled my holes.  There is about 1 foot of ice on top of the snow and there was one F-150 truck out on the ice and a snow mobile.

Having said that, I was able to find a 10" hole that failed to freeze back over because of snow insulation, allegedly from the tournament.  With my luck it was probably the only one on the lake, but still.

[chucknduck]

Anyone been there in the last couple days? Just wondering how the ice is holding up.