Reservoir Perch Fishing: Creature Baits

Last time out we focused on pike, on this outing we were reservoir perch fishing! The heavy rods stayed in the car, while Thom Hunt and I went on a search for big perch.

Thom hunt pike — Thom with a pike from our last trip

We both felt that big shads were probably going to get hit by the pike too much, so creature baits were generally going to be the approach. We knew from the previous session that the pike were ravenous, so we were crawling big, dark creature baits ‘under the radar’ to try and get to those big perch!

Strike king rage craw — Big creature baits for perch

Well, this kinda worked! Last time we dabbled with the reservoir perch fishing, opting for small 7cm shads to pick up lots of senior wasps. This time, with our new approach, the perch got bigger. We both landed plenty, with quite a few that were 35cm – 39cm but we couldn’t quite break that 40+.

Perch fishing slick shad — Plenty of perch around this size – on the Slick Shad

One lure that was very successful was the Caffeine Shad. I was letting this drop to the bottom vertically and then bringing it about 1ft off the deck and just hanging it there! The motion of the boat was enough to impart a bit of action into the lure and the perch were smashing it!

Reservoir Perch Fishing — Strike King Caffeine Shad
Getting bigger .. around 35cm on the Caffeine Shad

I was rotating through a few lures and this certainly seemed to encourage more bites!

Thom certainly caught plenty too, mainly on his Westin craws in blue/black.

Thom hunt perch fishing — Thom with a creature caught perch

We were running out of time when I got a solid thump on the Strike King Rage Craw, but it almost immediately fell off!! I turned to Thom to do some swearing when it was hit again! 😳 This time it hung on and we were absolutely buzzing as we both knew this was the 40+. It felt like we’d executed our plan quite effectively, and whilst we did pick up several pike this 43cm perch told us that we’d got something right!

Big perch fishing reservoir — Biggest perch of the day at 43cm

The perch above took the Rage Craw, a big creature bait on a Cheb Rig that was certainly accounting for the better fish!

My successful lures on the session were the 4’ Rage Craw Crawdaddy and the 12.5cm Caffeine Shad both by Strike King and the 3.5’ Natural Critter by Fox Rage.

Reservoir pike Thom hunt — We both caught a few pike too

It was a cold day, but the sun was shining and it was an awesome day to be afloat and I’ll certainly be doing more reservoir perch fishing in the coming months! 😁