Rick Long swung the white perch aboard his boat and eyed it critically.
“It?s big enough,” he smiled.
I opened the cooler lid as Long flipped the perch in to join some buddies and a block of ice.
Some anglers like big white perch; some like little guys. It boils down to whether you want a mess of big white perch for a fish fry, or livewell of smaller ones for live-lining stripers and the chance for bigger striper fillets. For Long and his wife, it was white perch fish-fry night.
My wife Brenda and I were fishing with Long at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a search for both stripers and perch. Fishing had been good.
“It?s red hot at the Bay Bridge right now,” Long phoned me a few days earlier. “I?ve been getting a lot of white perch and some stripers to 28 inches.”
We were using different rods rigged with single or tandem shad darts (white perch) or a jig head/soft plastic fluke tail (stripers). We caught both, but not in numbers the previous red hot fishing had predicted.
The big white perch stayed with us for a ride all the way back to the fish fry. We released stripers, even though they were in the slot limit size range.
Sadly, two of our stripers had lesions, the mycobacteriosis the state is studying in a tagging survey (see column of June 15, June 19). Both were in bad shape ? one with a hole that penetrated to the body cavity, the second covered with ugly red sores.
Despite the safety of handling fish (release lesioned fish, eat the good ones) assured by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and concerned state agencies, you did not want to touch these fish.
Fortunately, Long had the answer with his invention FISHOFF glove. He designed it four years ago for handling fish that are toothy, spiny, slimy, smelly or otherwise not touch-me friendly. In other words, almost all fish.
The FISHOFF glove has a wide cuff, held open with a wire frame, and includes a Velcro patch on the palm/wrist side to allow pulling off/slapping back onto a belt-held vinyl-and-Velcro pants-protector. To use, slide a hand into the wide cuff, pull free from the Velcro, unhook the fish for release, then slap the glove back onto the pants protector for use the next time. It?s a one-hand operation and a lanyard prevents loss.
It worked well, maybe too well. Brenda ? who loves fishing ? said that she was not fishing again without one of those gloves. Period. We bought one.
The glove is available in small, medium or large, right or left hand, with the belt, pants-protector and lanyard or with a Velcro patch-only for attachment to boat console, cooler or tackle box. Respective prices (belt or patch model) are $25 or $15.
For information, contact Long at (301) 574-4672, [email protected] or visit online at mysite.verizon.net/fishoff3.
C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally known sportsman and award-winning writer on fishing, hunting, and the outdoors. He can be reached at [email protected].
