Hopkins Creek May 24

[axxell33]

I was sittin at work counting down the minutes to leave when my neighbor (DaveCobb319) called me. I convinced him we should drop the boat and do some fishing! I checked the local buoys and wind seemed to be kickin for a late evening top-water trip, so we decided to stay close and shoot for some perch.

We dropped his boat in Little Round bay at around 630pm and motored over to Hopkins Creek.. one of my favorite perch holes. The entrance to the creek is guarded by a sand jetty that sticks way out. I always start fishing the inside of that strip. I made my first cast with a white grub spinner.. and pulled in a 12" rock. The next cast resulted in the same. I crimped down the barb on my hook and cast again.. another rock. Before we moved out of the area, we caught well over a dozen of schoolie rock fish all in the 12" size range. Everyone I pulled in had a handful of other ones following right behind it. There were perch mixed in also.. and I found that the perch were more aggressive. It seemed that a faster retrieve would weed out the rock and trigger only perch strikes.

We moved on around and began to work the structure.. downed trees, logs, and a pier. It all held fish.. perch in the 8"-10" range. There were a few smaller mixed in as well as a couple that measured a bit larger, maybe a couple 11"ers.

They bit everything I threw at them and color didn't seem to matter today either. I normally start with white. The white curly tail grub worked very well as did the chart/glitter. I also used a small silver ratl-trap, a homemade spinner, homemade jigs, and some of Woody's jigs as well. Dave also even threw tiny paddle tail swimmers of various colors and caught consistently on those as well.

It has been a while since we cast against structure like that, so we both managed to catch very large "pier fish" too.. but I guess that is just part of the fun!

The good news is that there are plenty of aggressive perch to be caught and they were all in the places I saw them last year. Next time I may keep a couple of them for that fried perch "sammich" I've been thinking about for so long! The only thing I'm waiting on is to find some of those big delicious early summer garden tomatoes at a roadside stand..

Get out and fish!

[mbla]

Thanks for the report, sounds like those perch were hungry!
Looks like the summer pattern is starting to come alive in the creeks..

[J.A. Veil]

Way to go Brad.

My report from this morning in Weems is not as good as that. I spent 2 hours fishing Weems upstream of the Tucker St ramp. The water was an unpleasant brown color. I cast steadily during those two hours but hooked only about 5 perch (none larger than 8") and three hammer handle --sized pickerel.

Despite the slow bite today, I am happy to see that the perch are moving back into their summer locations.

[attml]

Great report Brad! Glad you and Dave got into them!! This little Rock are a lot of fun! We are definitely starting into the summer pattern. I have begun catching little perch off of my pier in the shallows. That's about the only fishing I have had time to do this spring!

Mark