Angler shows focus counts

Geri Tucker displays some of her yellow perch she took from Lake Erie. NOT BLADE PHOTO Enlarge

Call it the woman's touch, call it focus, call it all of the above, but Toledo angler Geri Tucker knows how to catch Lake Erie yellow perch when the catching is tough.

The lady angler, spouse of charter skipper Dan Tucker, put on a veritable clinic on perching on Tuesday, when a fickle cold front was slowly approaching and the fish weren't on the "bite" as eagerly as they had been in preceding days.

The Tuckers invited yours truly on a half day's busman's holiday to sample the perch action. "They're in a whole month-and-a-half early," said Tucker about the seasonal perch migrations to shallower onshore areas of the lakeshore. Traditionally, mid August till November has been prime perch season hereabouts, though the species can be sought anytime.

In any case, we dropped 51 perch onto cooler ice, initially working in 22 feet northeast of the Toledo Water Intake and then 29 feet west of B-Can of the Camp Perry Firing Range. Geri put more than half of those fish in the cooler, almost reaching her daily limit of 30 fish. Tucker and I did the rest.

Our fish ran just over four to the pound, a good grade for the western basin, with most fish running 7 1/2 to 9 or so inches and a few in the 10-to-11-inch class. But if Tucker and I had been concentrating on the fishing like his wife was, instead of intermittently reminiscing about the "old days," perhaps we would have limited out.

Interlude: Yes, Tucker and I, with probably 75 or more years on the lake between us, couldn't help but review part of the pantheon of now-passed characters we had known. There was Stevie Szuch, the Minnow Man, who claimed, probably correctly, to have spent more time piloting on the lake at night than any other sailor. Night after night, year and year, he would be out there, most often alone, in the days before fancy electronics, "picking minnows" with homemade gear in his old steel workboat, Maria. He and his wife, Aunt Jenny, sold them off the dock alongside their little diketop home, a converted net shack, along Cooley Canal.

And you cannot mention the lake without the legend himself, Jim Fofrich, Sr. - Old Ugly as he called himself. Supremely knowledgeable from years of hard-knocks experience and tankerloads of fuel burned, he too learned the lake by hand. A superb fisherman, a fierce and tough and unyielding competitor in a tournament, he nonetheless sold his charters as a day on the lake - not a full-court press to get a limit. He had it right.

Then there is the Misty Gull, a 27-foot Sportcraft, now faded and forlorn and forgotten, sitting on a trailer in a lot along U.S. 20, east of Clyde, unsold. It once belonged to Jane Rutschow, one of the lake's first lady charter skippers and a fine one at that. Back then, 27 Sports, airy soft-tops and forehead-cracking hardtops, were about as common as mayflies in the walleye fishing packs; it simply was the walleye boat. But that was then, back when the Coast Guard used to report 10,000 recreational boats on a summer weekend in the triangle of West Sister Island, the Perry Monument at South Bass Island, and the cooling tower at Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station. You had to see it to believe it.

In stark contrast on Tuesday, the Tuckers and I found ourselves virtually alone - not a boat in sight, for several hours. Times do change, eh? Well, enough of the mutterings and musing of older guys. And we supposedly only get worse with age.

Had not duty called back on land, we also might have stayed a little longer and found more active fish. On recent perch charters, Tucker noticed that a big flurry of action sometimes has not occurred till later in the day. The perch aren't talking.

"It's all concentration," Geri admitted later about her catching performance. "I do have a tendency to let my line lie on the bottom to kind of tease them before I tighten up the rig close to the bottom." Also, she added, "I watch the rod tip."

She and her husband prefer to use an in-line sinker and a single, snelled hook tied on the terminal end of the sinker, instead of tandem-hook wire spreaders or stacked-hook "crappie" rigs. Sharp hooks, of course, are a must - as the lady indicated when she demanded a brand-new, needle-sharp hook at the day's outset.

In any case, it was a lesson to observe Geri, as engrossed as a cat trying to stalk a mouse. She seemed to be willing the fish onto the hook. Her focus was a good reminder for all fishing, all the time, or any other such endeavor for that matter.

The legendary barebow archer Byron Ferguson, for instance, no doubt would agree. His motto is "become the arrow." In any case, Geri showed how to become a perch fisherman.

In related news, Dan Baker, at Butch and Denny's Bait on Corduroy Road in Jerusalem Township, said that "yellow perch have been pretty much saving us this year." Though action in the far western end of the basin is not consistent yet, Baker reports good perch catches around the Water Intake, half way between the Intake and Toledo Harbor Light, at Buoy 13 of the Toledo Ship Channel, around the chart area marked Gravel Pit, and around B-Can.

When the fish turn on, Baker said, a limit of 30 fish is possible in an hour. An eight-inch average also is possible with a little sorting, he added. His shop noted that the Turning Buoy at the end of the Ship Channel also has been perch-hot in recent days.

Further east, the better perch reports have come from between Marblehead and Kelleys Island, between Green and Rattlesnake islands, northwest of Kelleys, and north of Ballast Island, according to the Ohio Division of Wildlife.

Steve and Melissa Hathway, of Port Clinton, reported perch limits off Mazurik state access near Lakeside-Marblehead, for instance, which is in keeping with wildlife division reports.

Contact Steve Pollick at:

spollick@theblade.com

or 419-724-6068.