Fruitful search for perch

Area near Calumet Harbor/Inland Steel ignites with action

There is something righteous about wrapping bare hands -- ripe with the scent of fresh-caught fish slime -- around a homemade ham sandwich as a boat speeds back with a cooler loaded with limits of perch on ice.

I did just that Thursday morning. Not that it started that way.

We -- Ken ''The Lakefront Lip'' Schneider, a couple of members of the Antler Dancers Sportsmen Club and yours truly -- fished out of East Chicago Marina with Capt. Chuck Weis of Ace Charters.

We set out about 7 a.m. At Weis' first stop, we couldn't pop a keeper, mainly because 4-foot rollers had come out of nowhere, which made it impossible to feel the lightness of a perch bite.

Weis doesn't do anything tricky with his rigs: light spinning gear with a two-hook setup above a 1-ounce sinker on 6-pound monofilament.

He made a tactical decision to try other spots in a more protected area on the shoals east of Inland Steel. His gear might be basic, but his strategies aren't. They are honed in the searching.

''I have a lot of way points, first of all,'' Weis said. ''Fish your spots, but fish fish. Yesterday, we only caught about eight here.''

On Thursday, there they were. One Antler Dancer popped the first keeper. Then it was on. At one point, I made 12 consecutive drops where I had a perch by the time I flipped the bail after the sinker hit the bottom.

''About 5 percent of my trips are like this, but all November trips should be like this,'' Weis said.

In an hour, we had 50 keepers out of 100-plus perch. At that point, we upped our definition of a keeper, which early on had been 9 to 9½ inches or longer.

''It appears that school is back up before they go into their winter slowdown,'' Brian Breidert, Indiana's Lake Michigan fisheries biologist, said Thursday afternoon. ''We had not seen a perch since mid-August.''

The perch usually are in the Calumet Harbor/Inland Steel area by mid-October, but wicked winds blew that off this year.

''One thing about perch, they have tails,'' Weis said. ''They can move. They want food and comfort.''

That's why he has multiple spots.

''We stopped here, and they ignited,'' Weis said. ''I like that word.''

Good word, ignited.

Before 11 a.m., we had 75 keepers out of about 250 perch. That's roughly one keeper for each three perch caught.

It was no secret spot. Other boats were within shouting distance. We did nothing revolutionary: plain red hooks with fatheads or baby roach minnows. On some days, glow beads work better; on others, roaches or fatheads do better.

But this was one of those days where Weis said, ''You just have to put meat in front of them.''

It was so good that Schneider wondered, ''How many fish are here?''

I can't imagine the answer to that. Breidert thinks the perch fishery is stabilizing after the collapse of the 1990s.

But it is hard just to think of perch stabilizing when there is a cooler of good perch. (The average keeper was 10-plus inches, with the best going 13?250-134?/').

Weis caught the final keeper, the top perch in a double.

''Dude, we creamed them,'' Weis said.

It was time ... to break out the ham sandwiches.

''I think they will stay as long as they don't get that disruptive weather we had in October,'' Breidert said.

As long as ice doesn't make it impossible, boaters can access the perch around the Illinois/Indiana line by launching from 95th Street in Chicago or from the Hammond or East Chicago marinas on the Indiana side.

For Ace Charters, go to www.aceperchcharters.com or call (219) 838-2641. Weis plans to be in through the end of this week.