Snow Geese and Perch

Since the middle of the summer, I have headed to the same location on the St. Louis river; yet, I have caught few fish.  Why do I continue to travel to this location and fish?  The answer is relatively simple: this short stretch of the St. Louis river is a little known gem of southern St. Louis county.  Even with a semi-busy road directly parallel to this this location, the spot is tranquil and teaming with wildlife - particularly migratory waterfowl. 

The first time I took our friend Andy to this location, we were presented with an overhead show of hundreds of Canadian geese zig-zagging their way around the flyway.  This weekend was only different in the variety of waterfowl.  A majestic pair of snow geese flew over; they could be heard well after they were out of sight.  Ducks of all sorts passed by, as well.

Fishing, at this spot, however, is not great.  The fish do not perform any sort of hari kari.  They are not eager to throw themselves onto your hook.

The experiment with chicken livers this past Thursday failed to yield any signs of catfish.  I have fished with day-old, dead minnows before.  They smell, but it is something that does not stick with you.  Chicken livers, on the other hand, they seem to stick with you.  The smell gets under your nails and embeds itself into your skin.  If you cannot tell, I am not fond of using them as bait.  They would trigger better memories if I had caught anything with them.  Lore has chicken livers being the crack of the catfish world.  If this is true, then it is easy to say that there were no catfish at this location.

This brings me to Saturday's outting.  Melissa and I headed to the spot around sunrise.  We picked up some leaf worms at a convenience store in Gary New Duluth.  My plan was to try the livers one last time - perhaps it was a timing issue on Thursday.  Melissa told me I was crazy and should just use worms.

The chicken liver seemed to be some sort of anti-bait.  I was getting nothing but static on the line while Melissa, with her leaf worm, was getting pickups and dropped calls.

Forty-five minutes into the morning, MJ snagged a nice little perch.  At the same time, a local who frequents "the spot" came sauntering down the trail with a couple of old rods, a pack of smokeables in his shirt pocket, and a sack of what appeared to be bait.  He walked passed, but stopped on the bridge to talk.  He apparently caught an 8 pound northern at the spot the previous day.  It was not until later that all the times fishing there, and all the observations that I had made all came together and made sense as to why our fishing was hit and miss.

My first few trips to the spot, I found folks fishing for catfish.  But, they were not fishing from by the bridge. Instead, they were tossing their line upstream from the landing by the parking lot.

Secondly, the perch.  The small perch are essential parts of the food chain.  They eat the flat worms and small fish that can be found in the weed-zones along the edge of the river.   This is also where the zone where you will find smallmouth bass.  Just outside of the weed zone, you should find the larger preditor fish.  Why?  The perch.  The catfish I saw were probably not blue catfish - it is unlikely that they reside in the St. Louis.  It was more likely large bullheads or flathead catfish.  Either way, it goes back to the perch.

Why the perch?  If the gentleman was telling the truth, and he did catch an 8 pound northern, it was most likely feeding on the perch.  The large catfish may have been feeding on small perch or bits and pieces of what was left of perch after several large northerns or musky went through a school of perch.

The gentleman who claimed to be catching large northerns was fishing right at the outer edge of the weeds and where the current has caused the river to become deep quickly. 

I do not think we have exhausted the play book for fishing the St. Louis; it so happens that all the plays we have attempted have been less than successful.  We will continue on until there is too much ice on the river!