Hey guys, today I'm going to show you a real cool tip on how to catch big giant perch in Preskale Bay. So there's a million different ways to do this. Guys catch them on shiners and different types of jigs and even maggots and stuff like that. But I like to catch them on artificial. So this is a little plastic bait and it's on a drop shot rig, something that I use for smallmouth all year long and started using it for panfish and it works as good as anything for these big perch in the bay. Who are you? Mark, it's Mark. I didn't see you there. So we're out here just having fun, man. It's winter. The perch are piling into the bay. There's so many in here. It's unbelievable. Lots of little ones, but you've got to find the groups of bigger ones. But they're coming in through the shoot, filling up the bay. They'll be here all winter long and then they leave in the spring. But it's just incredible. It's good as it gets, isn't it? I mean, this is the best perch fishing I think in the country. Yep. Okay, so basically the rig consists of a hook about a foot to a foot and a half above a sinker. And I'm using a little number four split shot drop shot hook by Gamagots. So you can buy these anywhere. Fishing online usually has them. It's real small. You need something small because these perch have little mouths. But they definitely can get that in their mouth and you catch everyone that bites usually. And then I'm using a fishing online cylinder. You can use any weight at the bottom, but I like this fishing online cylinder. It's a tungsten weight. It's just a little smaller, denser. You can feel things a lot better. Feel the bottom with it better. I like anything from a three eighths up to a three quarter depending on how deep you're fishing. You can get away with a quarter on a nice day like today and fish and shallow or a fishing in 10 feet. This is called suffix nano braid. And it's just like silk. It's the smoothest braid that I've ever used. I usually use about eight pound test. You can use six, eight or ten. You want to use a really light braid. And oh, I'm getting interrupted. See that's another little one. Oh, it wasn't fish. You can't use the braid straight to the hook. The fish are smart. They can see it. So I'm tying a leader. I'm using four pound test. Sometimes I go down to two, but two to four pound test. And as you can see, my leader, it started out as about 15 feet this morning. And now it's down to about five feet. But anything four feet or better, you don't want those fish to see your braid. Floral carbon, I like because sometimes you're fishing a little deeper and you want that sensitivity. It doesn't have any stretch. So this is a seven five light faked chrome from 13 fishing. The real, any spinning roller work, I just happen to like this one. It's made by 13 fishing. It's called a prototype X. And when you pair it up with a 13 rod, it's about as light as it gets. So it's light as a feather and just fun to fish with. So the key to this technique, there's a couple of different things that you have to do right or you're not going to get bit. It's the difference between me and Mark. You know, I've caught 50 and he hasn't even caught one yet. Did you just caught one? No, you finally caught one. But that's the difference because I didn't show him how to do it yet. Because I like to watch him. I think it's funny. He's the good TV struggle, I guess. So you don't want to be moving the whole sinker in the bait. You want to have that sinker on the bottom and the slack line and just be able to jiggle that rod tip and make that bait move. The absolute key is tying the knot correctly. You tie the knot, you can use your clinch knot, you're improved clinch knot. Palomar is what I use. But any knot will work. Tie that knot. Leave yourself a longer tag than you normally would. So I'm leaving about maybe a foot and a half of line for the tag. I'm taking the tag and running it back down through the eye again from the top down. And then I pull that knot right down into the hook eye. It causes the hook to stick straight out and your bait is laying horizontal in the water, which is the absolute key because you're just jiggling in front of those fish. Oh, he's got another one. Another little one, it's because I got off of the weeds. This is cool, you just keep catching them and I'll keep talking. Look at how that little one inhaled that they can get it in there. These fish are mean. There's a lot of different soft plastics. My favorites are this. It's a tiny fluke from Zoom. And this is a one and a half or a two inch crappy tube. Shard truces, whites, anything clear, sparkles, metal flake. These both have metal flake in a month. Shard truces is more white. But you can't go wrong with those two colors. Sure, there's lots of other things that work. Pink and orange and red and different crazy blues and stuff like that. But basically you want to try to look like a small minnow. For some reason, perch love the color shard truce. This is a real fun way to fish. You want to kind of be vertical, but you don't have to be. I mean, we're covering water. We're fishing on a big flat. We're just throwing that thing out there. Ten feet of water, letting it sink and not doing anything fancy with it. We're just keeping that weight on the bottom and just giving it little twitches here and there to keep that bait moving and looking like a real minnow. But there's really nothing to it. There's another one. God done it. I'm letting you catch that for me. Oh, I lost it. No. But anyway, a lot of times the guys that go home with limits of big ones caught 200 in the day. So they're weeding through some small ones. We got the luxury of being in a boat. You can do this off the bank in a number of different places on the city side, on the bayfront, on the peninsula side, the channel walls. There's all the docks, marinas. There's perch everywhere. When you're out here in the boat, you know, we're just looking for big ones. You catch little ones. It's probably a good idea to move. It's a little bit better than one. Nope. But it's a lot of fun. Hopefully these tips will help you catch more perch. Oh, yeah.