Every once in a while in your ever increasingly busy life you find some spare time, and you decide to go fishing. Now you have to decide what to go fishing for. The first step is to check your local fishing reports. It's the middle of October and it looks like the salmon run is over and the steelhead are very slow and you want a sure thing. Aha the perch are in the cuts and local harbors, and fishermen are catching good numbers. All right, the decision is made, you're going perch fishing. You get out your maps and start looking for where to go and check the local forecast. It looks good for your favorite spot. Now you go through your tackle and get your perch gear ready, pack a lunch and pack everything in the truck for the next morning.

The next morning the weather looks picture perfect and your expectations are high for the day of fishing. The excitement only grows as you drive, stopping at the bait store on the way you ask the question; are the fish biting? The woman behind the counter replies yes they are catching good numbers of perch as a matter of fact the fishermen were lined up at the door at 6:00am this morning to buy bait. So you buy your bait and a couple of snacks, next stop fishing. As you pull into the marina there are a lot of cars and fishermen already there. This is a good sign that the fish are there, so you park unpack and find a spot in-between everyone else and start fishing. Right away you start getting nibbles and you catch a fish. Unfortunately the wind picks up, the temperature drops and fishing quickly tapers off and an hour later you only have three or four fish in the bucket.

The weather is getting worse and the fishing has slowed down, so you start talking with the anglers around you and it turns out the fishing was great yesterday. Everyone caught lots of fish and at sunrise this morning it was still good but started to slow down as the wind picked up. As you look around, the other anglers are starting to leave. Since this is your only time to fish you stay, after all the fish are there they just aren't biting very well, but still they are biting. You change to a lighter rod and less weight so you can detect the bite and still you're missing the fish and your hooks are being cleaned. The fish seem to be magically eating the bait off your hook without moving it at all.

So adding insult to injury another angler walks up next to you and after taking a few minutes to set up, he starts catching fish. That's just not fair, how is he catching fish. You're both basically using the same bait and fishing the same spot. What is he doing that is so different than what you're doing? Seeing the confused look on your face, your newly found friend tells you exactly what it is that he is doing to catch these seemingly uncatchable fish.

You didn't pay too much attention earlier but the harbor is jam packed with minnows, in fact every time you cast they jump. The normal behavior of schooling fish is that a fish will take a minnow and swim away from the school to eat it so that the other fish can't take it away, but this isn't what they're doing now. They've been stuffing themselves on the abundant minnows and now there full, so they just chew on the bait where it is. This is why your rod tip doesn't move. By using a very small bobber, and suspending a teardrop jig just a few inches off the bottom, you can see every little bit of action. When the fish has the bait in its mouth the bobber moves and the fish can't feel it. So while the fish is chewing on the bait you set the hook. And now you're catching fish too.