MARBLEHEAD, Ohio — Many of the anglers scurrying around to remove the towing safety straps and get their boats launched here at the Dempsey public ramp early on the last day in July will tell you all about “perch season.”
They will chatter on and on about this mythical time on the summer fishing calendar when Lake Erie’s prized yellow perch begin to school and decide to bite.
If these fishermen possess even half a lick of angling acumen, then all of them will catch perch today, and soon serve their families one of the tastiest fillets that the Good Lord’s waters have ever provided. But their success will not be the result of taking part in “perch season” or because of some whimsical trigger in nature that told these fish, the most popular freshwater quarry in America, that it was time to start biting.
All of that stuff about perch being in season, or suddenly changing their demeanor and starting to bite, is essentially folklore, legend, or nonsense.
“They feed all year so there is no certain time when that activity really picks up, but I think the notion that there is a season when yellow perch start biting has been around a long time,” said Eric Weimer, fisheries supervisor at the Ohio Division of Wildlife’s Sandusky Research Station. “It seems that later in the summer and into the fall, more people just start to focus on perch, so we see an increase in the number being caught.”
WATCH: Description of the gear and technique for Lake Erie perch fishing
Bob Barnhart, the owner of Maumee-based tackle supplier Netcraft, has watched the same phenomenon play out over the years.
“For many anglers, there was definitely a defined perch season, and it usually really got going in September,” Barnhart said. “It seems to start earlier now, but I think it’s always been the case of that’s just the time when a lot more fishermen were targeting perch. The fish didn’t change what they were doing – the fishermen did.”
Weimer said the increased focus on the Western Basin of Lake Erie’s yellow perch usually coincides with a change on the walleye fishing front. As the big lake continues to warm, more walleye move east for the deeper, cooler waters they prefer. As a result, the walleye fishing in this end of the lake gets tougher, and anglers opt to shift gears and pursue perch.
“When the walleye migrate east, the bite definitely slows down a bit, so it makes sense that some of the anglers would turn their attention to yellow perch,” Weimer said. He added that Lake Erie perch fishermen also tend to be creatures of habit when it comes to location, often returning to the same sites year after year.
“People will always go to those traditional areas to fish for perch, but I wonder how many boats are running right over good numbers of perch just to head out to those traditional areas,” he said. “In our trawl surveys, we’ve found that the perch are pretty well distributed. The perch population in the western end of the lake is as strong now as it has been in a long while. There are an awful lot of adult fish out there to be caught.”
Weimer said the fisheries biologists have examined the diet of yellow perch and found that earlier in the year perch rely on mayflies and other invertebrates, zooplankton and small worms along the lake bottom. That changes as the summer wears on and other food sources become available.
“In the diet work we’ve done, in the fall we do see a higher reliance on small fish as prey than we see during the summer,” he said. “That makes sense because those young-of-the-year fish are growing and they get to a point where they are big enough for yellow perch to switch over and feed on them.”
Emerald shiners make up a portion of that yellow perch diet as we get later in the year, and those fragile, flashy little swimmers can be hard to come by at the bait shops once the anglers really start to lock in on perch, spiking the demand for shiners. Some anglers claim they catch just as many perch on golden shiners or other baits, but some fishermen insist that emerald shiners are the only choice.
“It seems that around the full moons, the emerald shiners become scare because they’re just not as easy for the netters out on the lake to find,” Barnhart said. “Once they get scarce, that’s the number one complaint I hear from fishermen – is that they just can’t get the bait they need – and for some guys, if they can’t find the right shiners, they won’t bother fishing.”
Barnhart said that for the angler wanting to give Lake Erie’s plentiful perch a try, getting the gear you need to fish for this species is nothing complicated.
“Perch are probably the most simplistic of all the fish to target, because you don’t need all of the specialized gear you might need to fish for walleye or bass,” he said. “You just need a five or six foot medium action spinning rod with a fairly soft tip, an appropriate size reel spooled with 10-pound braided line and either a perch spreader or a top-and-bottom rig. That style of rod gives you the sensitivity you need to pick up the light bites, and that line will let you feel every bite.”
Weimer reminded anglers that the daily limit is 30 perch, and the best concentrations of fish are usually found on or close to the bottom.
“But if you’re not succeeding on the bottom, try pulling that rig up a couple of cranks or so,” he said. “Just that little adjustment can save the day for some anglers.”
Contact Blade outdoors editor Matt Markey at: mmarkey@theblade.com or 419-724-6068.
First Published August 2, 2018, 6:00 p.m.
