Five star day on the water with lots of sun and a slight breeze out of the Northwest. Ran over to the South end of Mercer and started working over the area with a Brad’s Mini Cutplug on one rod and a hoochie setup on the other. Bait started showing up 40’ down on the sonar as we reached the Southwest tip of Mercer and continued as we made our way North. For about an hour the Cutplug was getting hit often which resulted in a couple of smaller fished released and several that released themselves on their way to the boat. Switched over the other rod to Brad’s and continued working the area. The bite all but switched off for us however I managed one 18”+ fish before we decided to put up the trolling gear and target perch. The fish was pretty fat and had been dining on fairly good sized young sockeye. All of the action came with the gear set at around 40’ down, we did try deeper but it didn’t produce.

The perch we found were still a bit skinny and not as large as I am accustom to seeing this time of year. We fished in water around 18’ to 20’ deep, using perch meat and small plastics. We kept a couple dozen and called it a day around 2:30 as the boat traffic started to pick up.

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