Perry County Community Lake

[Haris122]

Me and a fishing buddy of mine went there early Sunday morning up until early afternoon. Did the best either of us have ever done there. Started out with a black crappie a piece by some shallow lilly pads of all places, with various things (small tube under slip bobber), then I caught a couple of largemouth bass on topwater (torpedo), and then the action continued with the odd fish here and there either on the topwater, the slip bobber with various soft plastics underneath, or a rooster tail. I know my buddy had some on a rooster tail and some worms, not sure what else he got his on though. Nothing turned out to be big. Probably the biggest fish for each of us being a 11" Largemouth. Though he also had a nice redear, we both had decent crappie, and I had a decent bluegill and a rock bass to show for it. Anyways we pretty much just pounded the shoreline or nearby it from the boat. And tried trolling in the deeper water as we travelled between spots, but had no luck with that. I held the lead by 2 fish up until the last hour and a half or so, but then he overtook me and won the day about 14-10 or 14-11. Next time, I'll come be winner. That and I better learn how to fish in deeper water successfully. 

[jdmidwest]

Its hit and miss there.  Spring is good for crappie and bluegill.  August is good for cats off the points.  Never really did much good with bass, just small ones. 

Trolling deep in the middle should have gotten a striper, but they are few and far between.

[Haris122]

This was definitely the best outing either of us ever had out there. Nothing big but numbers were pretty good by my standards, and 11" Largemouth are still on the lengthy end for the bass I catch. This exact same fishing buddy of mine actually had caught a 15" one at this lake before. The topwater hits were especially cool to see. This is one of the few lakes I've had any real luck with top water lures at.

[jackdizo]

I grew up in Perryville and have fished the lake extensively. Its a great channel catfish lake if you like fishing for channel cats. Have caught alot of channel cats in the double digits out of that lake, with the biggest just tipping 20lbs and being my biggest channel cat I have ever caught anywhere... The crappie population is good, but most are small and stunted. I personally dont crappie fish, but have friends that still live down that way that tell me about 40 fish days, with the bigger crappie only topping out around 9 inches. The largemouth bass fishing is good, although the lake is heavily pressured, but there are some monster largemouth in the lake. I have never caught a striper out of the lake, but know of guys who have caught some in the 6-8lb range in the late fall when they start schooling on the shad real good and give away their location, otherwise they seem elusive. I have not really put in the time on targeting them though. The gizzard shad population is very healthy in this lake and has a direct effect on the size of some of the game fish you can catch. If your going to catfish the lake, nothing beats cut shad straight from the lake. Have had some epic days cat-fishing the lake. Hope to get down there in the next week to get on that fall bass bite. 

[cart7]

I've also spent a lot of time fishing Perry County over the years.

There are lots of crappie in that lake but as mentioned, they're stunted.  The conservation department wants you to pull as many out as the limit allows but seriously, how many people are interested in filleting up a bunch of 5" crappie.  It's hardly worth the work.  I'm not sure how they'll fix that issue.

As for the bass fishing.  My personal best of 8 1/2lbs came out of Perry.  I've caught numerous fish in the 5-6lb class in that lake.  It can be hit or miss and some days all you'll pull out of there are small fish.  

[Haris122]

We tried Perry county CL again yesterday. I figured we were bound to catch some fish but I didn't think it would get into the double digits considering the time of year. When we got there, there were a bunch of shad that had died or seemed to be in the process of dying, swimming weirdly, sometimes upside down, all over the place. We even saw a couple bald eagles, so I'm guessing they were feasting on the shad.

Anyways to get to the bottom of things, we started out fishing some brush and started catching little crappie and mainly just kind of stuck with that, seeing how we weren't expecting much else to be going on. A few times we'd try to troll or fish around the bank for the hell of it but nothing came of that so we didn't give it too much time. My buddy was fishing mainly with minnows under a slip bobber, I was mainly fishing tubes (blue, orange, and "kryptonite" green) on 1/64 and 1/32 jigheads also under a slip bobber. At first I was doing better on numbers while he was doing better on size but eventually he overtook me in numbers too. He got 13, I got 10 by the end. Out of his 13 there was 1 10" bass and several 8" crappie. Out of my 10, all were Crappie and only 1 was around 8". The rest of the crappie were pretty small for both of us. We both had a good mix of black and white ones, with the black ones seeming more solid for their size. At first we were catching them pretty shallow, but later on as he shot past me, he had a run of 6 fish to my 1 in deeper water. 

[jdmidwest]

That shad kill happens every year.  Something with the temps in the winter and low oxygen I assume.

They put those in to feed the stripers.  But they have to aerate the lake in the summer to keep things going.  All of the dead timber and gunk coming in the upper end combined with the depth must be killing the oxygen levels in the lake.

[Haris122]

I heard that gizzard shad eventually die off pretty heavily, below a certain water temperature. But the past few days before that, the temperatures had been getting better I figured. Leading up to and including Monday it had been kind of nice. I know like 2 or 3 winters ago when it was real cold for a while, they died by the masses. Much more even than this time. But I don't know, it could be oxygen too. I just thought oxygen is less of a problem in the winter than later on, so it kind of seems odd that, that would do it.

[cart7]

You were seeing a normal shad kill.

Very normal at PC and most other lakes in Missouri that time of year.  That's what the bass are feeding on which is why suspending Rogues or Lucky Craft baits are so effective.   You're mimicking the dead shad's actions.  

[Haris122]

Went to Perry County with a Fishing buddy yesterday again. Pretty early on he gets a 15" Largemouth on a chatterbait, hyping us up for more. However, most of the rest of the day we hit a lull where little to nothing (nothing for me) is biting, and definitely nothing gets caught. We hit several of our usual confidence spots, then some other spots, basically keep beating the shoreline to no avail with a variety of different lures. Finally later on in the day, we make it over to the little dam in one of the coves, and we start getting bites close to it. My buddy catches a Bluegill, then I go on a short-lived panfish hot streak and catch 5 Bluegill and a Rock Bass on a piece of plastic worm on 1/64th jighead under slip-bobber. Unfortunately that's the extent of the success for us. That early good catch had us thinking it was bound to become a real good day, but then the fish put us back in our place.