Cascade Perch

[lowe-185]

Drove to Cascade Friday morning to see if there were any perch left over from ice fishing. Don't worry, there are plenty of perch.
For the report; Launched at Boulder Creek, ( 9am) I don't know all the names of the coves, launches or creeks, so you will have to play along.
idle out to middle of the lake, find the channel, motor over the break line, and drop a worm on a drop shot. drag it around, there were no takers.
Idle up into on of the three main "arms", depth finder showed a few fish and weed beds at 13 feet.
send the worm down on the drop shot, drag it for about 5 seconds, set hook and real in a whopper-- 4 incher.
caught so many little fish that It would make you crazy.
Switched location. found warmer water, drop the worm down, and reel in a 12 inch perch. Set up the boat, drift sock and make a pass, and started getting decent fish.
Water temp was 47. All the better fish, 11 to 13 inchers came out of 13 feet of water.
In the afternoon, the bite died. switched to a Texas rig and found a main point on the main body. drag the worm around in 15 feet of water and got some keepers.

IMO, you had to keep the bait moving. If the bait was moving slow you would get all the little fish, move a little faster the bigger fish would hit.
Most of the fish caught had already spawned. Only had 2 females that still had their eggs.
Did not land any big perch 14+ .

That should about cover it.
Thanks to those who helped point me in the right direction.
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[AverysAdventure]

Welcome to the site lowe-185. Thanks for the report.

[Kodiak1]

Nice complete report. Thanks for sharing. Most of all, welcome to the site, and hope to hear much more from you. Mike
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[Duck-Slayer]

Glad you had a good time, thanks for giving a good report,
Matt
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[idahopanfish]

Welcome to the site and great report!
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[Elkhunter1834]

Fished Cascade today, perch are still in there, saw lots of fish on the graph, landed one at 15.5" nothing smaller then 13" only kept what i could have fresh fish tacos for Easter Dinner. Back home for BBQ by 3:30 Bait had to be moving or no bites. Caught one nice 23" rainbow. Great Morning on the water.
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[hooknhunter]

Based on your handle I'm guessing that you have a Lowe boat?

I think I may have drove past you on my way back to ther ramp around noon on Friday.

I did decent, but was disappointed at the small size of the perch I was catching. Still, I caught plenty.

I also had a very pleasant surprise on this trip. I finally got into the crappie I've been hearing about in Cascade. They weren't non-stop action by any means, but there were enough to be fun. Some of them were in the 12-13 inche ball park, so I decided to keep a few.

[Duck-Slayer]

Awesome HnH, I still don't believe there are crappie in cascade....[crazy] that's of coarse until I catch one....
Matt
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[BorntoFish01]

Over the years I've only managed to catch an occasional crappie. Don't know if the population is that small, and/or they're scattered thinly through the watershed. Once while camping in Poison Creek a fellow told me that he occasionally did pretty good on them in the Gold Fork but I never got around to trying it and figure out the seasonality of their movements/locations. Those are some nice slabs in the pics.
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[lowe-185]

HnH,
yep, probably was me. Only two of us in the boat.
That is great to hear about the crappie. hoping to find that size and bigger in Brownlee this year.
good to hear you found enough perch.
Just a shame that I have to go back Saturday for the derby. []
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[hooknhunter]

Yep. I remember motoring past 2 guys in a Lowe. I slowed down as I went past.

I really wasn't fishing that far from you. It did slow down a lot about an hour or 2 before I left.

Although I have caught a couple of very nice crappie out of Brownlee this year (my 2 biggest crappie ever), I wouldn't count on them in numbers from what I've seen so far. The keepers have been few and far between.

Sorry to hear you're going to be forced back to Cascade again this week. Life must be really hard. []

[idahopanfish]

Nice Job on the crappie. We are going to have to talk[]
Got the the PU camper ready and just finished legthening my boat trailer and put a new battery in her as 2 weekends ago the FF low voltage warning kept coming on every time I back off on the RPM's. Nice job on those crappie!
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[Squarehog]

Nice work on the crappies. That had to be a lot of fun getting into them up there.
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[Elkhunter1834]

Great Job HNH. Thinking I will try it again this weekend. Nice looking Crappie
Eric
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[lowe-185]

Another 5 pounds of fillets and 2 crappie in the freezer from the weekend. whaaa hoooo.
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[hooknhunter]

Crappie come from that same general area as where I saw you? How was the size of the fish you caught?

[Duck-Slayer]

heard one guy came in with some pretty big perch for the soft water tourney they had up there last weekend, sounds like the perch bite is on.....[fishon]
Matt
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[lowe-185]

Hnh,
Yep, the fish was from the general area that you saw me last weekend. they were only 10 inch fish. but hey, I finally got a crappie out of cascade. []
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[lowe-185]

Must have been a pretty good perch. last I seen on Saturday the winning 3 perch weight was 4.98 or around there I think. We were a pound off. Just could not find another big perch to go with the other two.
We ran around to some other spots, but just could not get the same amount of action as the primary spot.

Does Sugar Loaf hold perch this time of year ?
did not want to go that far out, just because of the wind.
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