BROOME’S ISLAND, Md. — I don’t have a thing against people who catch fish with baited hooks and sinkers, even if it takes hours of sitting still while waiting for a nibble. However, I prefer to use artificial lures. So to each his own.
My preference for artificials is one reason why, when Don Gardiner invited me to come white perch fishing, I made a nuisance of myself questioning him to make sure this wasn’t to be a bottom-fishing trip with bloodworms or peeler crab chunks that might serve as perch attractants.
“No way,” Gardiner said. “I’m no different than you. It’ll be strictly spinnerbaits and things like that.”
Gardiner, a retired District firefighter, fishes from a 23-foot-long Carolina Skiff rigged to serve the comfort of his friends. When he visits the Patuxent River before sunrise, expect to see half a dozen spinning and casting rods deposited in a wide array of holders.
Gardiner’s rig has comfortable deck chairs, a huge cooler filled with water and a portable aerator that the fish are deposited in — and can be culled from. Somewhere on that well-equipped boat also is a smaller cooler filled with tasty edibles. Gardiner has a reputation for bringing food, bless him.
We arrived at a private marina along the lower Patuxent just as the first light of day crept over the shoreline trees. Already the parking lot was jammed full of tow vehicles and empty trailers.
Only minutes later, our boat was deposited in the briny, the car and trailer were parked and Gardiner, with long-time friend Phil Angle and me in the boat, quickly approached a marsh bank in water that was less than 4 feet deep. The three of us held lightweight spinning rods, reels filled with monofilament line no heavier than 8-pound test, and at the business end of the nylon were 1/8-ounce white- or chartreuse-skirted spinnerbaits.
I can’t recall what types Gardiner and Angle were using, but for summertime white perch, I prefer the 1/8-ounce Strike King Pro Model spinnerbait with a single nickel blade. White perch are the most democratic of salt or brackish water fish. They can’t resist the whirling blade and pulsating skirt of this and a half dozen other lures.
All three of us connected almost immediately. We’d cast our artificials toward the edge of a marsh bank, close our reels, retrieve a few feet of line, then slow it down enough to a point where a spinnerbait sat almost motionless in the shallows. The moment the retrieval of line was resumed, “Pop, slurp,” the white perch would attack.
Given the use of light rods and reels, a 10- or 11-inch white perch offers a fair fight. With Gardiner serving as unpaid guide, his bow-mounted electric trolling motor humming along quietly, it came as no surprise that we hooked and released some 85 perch before the heat of the morning rose enough to make us think of heading back home.
Angle and I kept a dozen perch each, and later that night my family enjoyed a wonderful dinner of tasty, fried, boneless fillets of perch. I’m sure my fishing partner, Angle, planned the same.
You can do the same, of course. This time of year during the early and late hours, the perch hang out in reasonably shallow tidal water along marsh banks, fallen trees, around boat docks, rock-filled breakwaters and rip-raps.
If the tide recedes strongly or the temperature rises into the 90s, they’ll retreat into nearby deep water to wait for more suitable conditions. As it happens, they’ll return to the marsh and tree edges to hunt minnows and small crustaceans.
What is so delightful about white perch is their willingness to attack a wide variety of small, shiny lures. Make sure you have a couple of the aforementioned 1/8-ounce spinnerbaits and a couple of size 1 or 2 inline spinners in white or chartreuse, such as a Roostertail or Shyster. Try also a 1/8-ounce Silver Buddy, or a Mini Rat-L-Trap and the always popular 1/8-ounce or 1/16-ounce Beetlespin.
If the lure has a treble hook, clip off one of the three barbs on the hooks so it can be removed easily from a perch’s mouth. It’s one reason why single-hook spinnerbaits are so easy to use.
Gardiner, in fact, pinches down the inside keeper barb on his spinnerbait hook. “It is so much easier to release a fish that way,” he said. “Now and then I’ll lose a perch but not often enough to worry about it.”
We quit when the morning sun began to penetrate our shirts and we felt like bread baking in an oven. All the same, the perch delivered the goods as they usually do, and for that they’ve earned a special place in our fishing hearts.
• Look for Gene Mueller’s Outdoors column every Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday, only in The Washington Times. E-mail: gmueller@washingtontimes.com.
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