Yellow Perch

Happy May everyone!

I want to apologize for the delay in posts, but I had to take advantage of the beautiful weather these past few weeks at the Lake Erie Fishing Charter! There was a lot of fish being caught over the past few weeks, and not just by me! Many types of fish were caught these past couple weeks, including the interesting species of the yellow perch and the smallmouth bass (this will be discussed in the following post).

The yellow perch have many different nicknames, so you may know them from a few of the many names: striped perch, American perch or for the scientifically inclined readers the perca flavescens. Yellow perch are beautiful yellow or bass-colored fish with olive toned green stripes along its body. These fellas are generally around 4-10 inches long, but can get up to a record of 18 inches! But do not let that fool ya, they are almost never more than 2 lbs in weight, so these guys are relatively small. I must admit that although I personally have not, I have seen other fishers find these guys sized at 12 inches at the Fishing Charter on Lake Erie.

I will let you in on a little secret: the yellow perch have been spotted spawning! Females can spawn up to eight times in her life, once a year. When the female perch lays its eggs, she can lay up to 40,000 eggs. Moreover, yellow perch do not care for their young. ‘Hate to say it for the fish, but it is good for us fishers to catch those little guys! It is easy to spot the spawning beds as they are often up to two meters long per female, and they are done in shallow areas of water. Keep an eye on those beds, because after about three weeks the eggs will hatch and out swim the yellow perch! These poor guys are also easy to spot because they are weak swimmers, and thus need to swim in schools of 50-200 fish. Watch out though, those walleye we have talked about the past couple weeks tend to prey on the yellow perch. Fortunately, there are plenty of yellow perch in Lake Erie.

These guys are also supposedly tasty. I have never tried a yellow perch, but word around the charter is that demand for yellow perch as food fish is increasing and commercial fisheries are struggling to fulfill the demand increase!

The most recent temperature of the water at Lake Erie was recorded at 42 degrees Fahrenheit, and the yellow perch spawns at a water temperature from about 40-45 degrees Fahrenheit. Thus those perch should continue to spawn over the next couple weeks.

If you have any questions about the yellow perch at Lake Erie or Lake Erie fishing charters, please visit the Erie Drifter website.