Fishin' Magician: Dave Graybill

I had heard that the perch bite was on at Potholes Reservoir, so I called my buddy Brian Nielson, of BJs Guide Service, to see if he wanted to give it a try.

He said that he had talked to Mike Meseberg at Mar Don Resort, and in fact this was a perfect time to try for multi species on the reservoir. We launched there Tuesday morning and headed across to Perch Point.

We actually had a slow start, with a few nice perch in the live well, and then it got hot.

It was had to keep baited rods in the water as we either hooked fish or got our baits stolen. Sometimes we had to grab the others rod while they were doing something in the boat or were landing another fish.

It was wild. Meseberg was right; this is a multi species time on Potholes.

We ended up catching seven different species, including perch, smallmouth bass, crappie, rainbow trout, walleye, catfish, and even a whopper carp. We did all this just trolling Slow Death Hooks and a Smile Blade on bottom walkers.

We tried to keep the boat in about 20 feet of water and trolled at about 1 mile per hour.