Good times at Rockport

[MWScott72]

To clarify, it’s always a good time on the ice, but the last few trips at RP, the jumbos have basically eluded me.  Not so yesterday!  Arrived and got set up to fish at about 3:30 and fished until 6:30.  The bite was pretty consistent except for the last 15 minutes or so.  Weather was beautiful with partly cloudy skies and a light breeze until about 5pm, then overcast set in and the wind picked up to a steady 10-12 mph.  Had me wishing I’d brought my tent to set up, but the weight savings was worth it.  I ended up icing over 20 nice perch in those 3 hours.  3 were at or over 11” with the largest being 11.5”.  The remainder were in that 9.5-10.5” range with a few smaller ones kept.  Better yet, the ratio of keepers to dinks was pretty even.  Best lure was a silver Hali with a red spot and a glow bead on the hook.  Bait was wax worms.  I didn’t want to mess with perch eyes since they were biting well enough on the waxies.  I did bait up hooks with a couple eyes though and they worked fine as well.  My last two trips have been in 21 and 29 FOW with mostly dinks.  Yesterday was 36 FOW and fish were always below me until they shut off at 6:15.

Slush was manageable with some areas even hard enough to support me (180 lbs dripping wet).  Going in the AM would be awesome as I’m sure it would be froze up more and easier dragging a sled.