“Summer Fishing in the Northern United States with Ernie Calandrelli”

Part 3: Use the Mister Mino for Everything Else

Editor’s Note: Ernie Calandrelli of Orchard Park, New York, the public-relations director for Quaker Boy Calls, has fished below Niagara Falls on the Niagara River for more than 50 years and guided on the Niagara River, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario for 21 years. This week, Calandrelli will tell us where to fish and how he catches, fillets and cooks his catch.

Question: Ernie, what do you fish for when you’re not guiding?

Calandrelli: I prefer to fish for bluegills, walleyes or yellow perch with a 2-inch Mister Twister Mister Mino. You can use this bait successfully on the back of a jighead in Lake Erie, a farm pond, Lake Ontario and the upper and the lower sections of the Niagara River. The yellow perch population in Lake Erie is incredible. Many times you’ll have problems finding emerald shiners, which is the No.1 perch bait in this area. Once I get the yellow perch in a feeding frenzy with the emerald shiners, then I’ll start baiting with the Mister Twister Mister Mino. Those yellow perch don’t know the difference between plastic and emerald shiners.

Question: How and why did you start using the Mister Twister Mister Mino?

Calandrelli: I was going through so much bait using perch rigs with two hooks coming off each side of the main line (like a two-hook crappie rig) that when I saw the Mister Mino, I decided to give it a try. I’ve learned since then that many times you can catch four or five perch on the same Mister Mino without re-baiting. Mister Minos not only catch more perch than emerald shiners, but with the Mister Mino, you can keep the bait in front of the perch longer.

When you get yellow perch to start biting, you want to get the fish in the boat and the bait back in the water down to the perch before they stop biting. You don’t want the school of perch to move away from your boat before you catch as many as you can. We can catch 50 perch-per-person, so we want to catch as many as possible when we reach a biting school. With the Mister Mino, we can keep the bait in front of the perch until they eat it. When we catch a perch, we can bring up the fish, put it in the live well or the ice chest and drop the line back down with the same Mister Mino bait we’ve used to catch the last fish.

Question: How big are the yellow perch you catch?

Calandrelli: We catch really-nice-sized perch around 14-inches long, which is an incredible size for yellow perch.

Question: What’s your favorite color Mister Mino?

Calandrelli: I prefer the one with the blue back.

Question: What else do you catch with Mister Mino?

Calandrelli: I catch bluegills and crappie in farm ponds. Too, I fish Honeoye Lake in the Finger Lakes region. Early in the year, the bluegills there will be in 10 to 12 feet of water, and in the middle of the summer, they’ll move out to 30 feet of water. So, I put the lightest head I can on the Mister Mino, cast it out to the deep water and let it sink on 4-pound-test line. I watch my line to see it twitch, indicating a bluegill’s bite. If I don’t get a bite by the time the Mister Mino hits the bottom, I reel the bait in and cast it out again. The bluegills will bite the Mister Mino well in the deep water because it falls so slowly that they can watch it for a long time before deciding to eat it.

Question: How big are the bluegills you catch?

Calandrelli: We don’t keep any fish less than 9 inches, which is a good-sized bluegill. A 10-inch bluegill is very big up here in the North.

Question: How do you use Mister Mino to catch crappie?

Calandrelli: I use a light jighead, cast the Mister Mino out and reel it in to the boat.

Question: Where do you catch crappie?

Calandrelli: Mainly in farm ponds. We have quite a few farm ponds with crappie in them in New York. We just don’t tell many people about them. The Mister Mino is deadly effective for catching farm-pond crappie.

To fish with Ernie Calandrelli, call Ernie’s Guide Service at (716) 609-3064, or email ernieqv@yahoo.com.