A fisherman from Columbus called early last week, anxious to know if the yellow perch were biting on Western Lake Erie and if it was time for “perch season”.
I had to inform him, in as diplomatically a manner as possible, that there is no perch season, officially or unofficially.
When anglers choose to target perch, they are in season. That can be in the 90-degree smoldering hot days of mid-July, the crisp autumn mornings we find in late October, the first sunny days of April, or through the ice on a bitterly cold late January morning.
“It's simply a matter of angler effort,” said Bob Barnhart, a Lake Erie angler and the owner of Maumee-based tackle supplier Netcraft. “Those perch schools are out there and they've been there all along, but when the walleye fishing is so good, not much attention is paid to perch fishing. The perch catch rates go up when the effort on the part of the fishermen increases.”
That sentiment is shared by Travis Hartman, the Lake Erie Fisheries Program Administrator in the Sandusky Fisheries Research Unit of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
“In my mind, the perch season is dictated more by anglers' desires than perch behavior,” Hartman said. “I’ve always seen the “perch season” as being nearly exclusively dictated by walleye fishing in the Western Basin.”
He said that in the past, when walleye populations were low and walleye summer migrations (east) started early because of early hot weather, yellow perch were getting the attention of more anglers as early as June. As walleye fishing improved dramatically in recent years, the transition to perch fishing took place later in the summer, often in early August.
“Historically, the “season” peaked in September, and then lasted as long as the weather allowed or until marinas dictated that boats be pulled in mid- to late-October,” Hartman said. “The only real behavioral reason for improved perch fishing historically would have been the tendency for perch to move inshore as they follow schools of emerald shiners, but that normally wouldn’t have been until October and November.”
With walleye fishing trending up over the past few years, trolling and drifting for those prized Lake Erie trophies received the bulk of the angler effort from ice-out through spring and early summer. Sophisticated tracking studies revealed that many of the larger walleye headed for the deeper, cooler waters to the east once the Western Basin warmed beyond their comfort zone. As anglers catch more smaller walleye and sub-legal fish called shorts, Barnhart believes many decide to shift gears and focus on yellow perch.
“As the summer doldrums wear on, a lot plays into what we might call angler frustration — catching smaller fish, wading through some shorts, wading through some trash fish, dealing with the algal blooms — so fishermen make the choice to start targeting perch,” he said, adding that the “perch season” is much more a product of human behavior than that of the fish.
When the discussion centers on yellow perch fishing on Lake Erie in 2022, both Barnhart and Hartman introduce a secondary element to the story. Another invader has scrambled the picture by landing on the perch's menu.
The invasive spiny water flea, an aquatic zooplankton that likely sneaked into the lake in the ballast water of ships from Europe and Asia, has disrupted the already stressed Great Lakes ecosystem. These prolific tiny animals, which are just a half-inch in length, have become a mainstay in the perch diet, so when the water fleas are present in numbers, perch are less likely to take the minnows Lake Erie anglers have used as their primary perch bait for decades.
“Without a doubt, we've seen these spiny water fleas have a profound impact on perch fishing,” Barnhart said.
Hartman said an abundance of other food sources has also scrambled the picture for perch fishermen used to dropping emerald shiners to the bottom with crappie rigs or perch spreaders.
“What we are seeing going on behaviorally right now with yellow perch is much different than the past few decades,” Hartman said. “We now have more spiny water fleas in the west than we’ve ever had, along with seemingly more abundant midge larvae and mayfly larvae. This “new” abundance of invertebrate food sources has changed perch feeding behavior.”
Hartman added that some of the best perch fishing takes place in late July and early August when the water in Lake Erie's Western Basin is at its warmest, since spiny water flea production slows in the higher water temperatures. As the water in the lake cools back down in late August into September, the water fleas become more abundant.
“When they are extremely available as a prey item, perch heavily feed on them, seemingly causing very short daily feeding windows and limited angler success,” Hartman said. “At some point in October, water flea production slows again, and then angler catch rates increase.”
Barnhart said that with spiny water fleas present in significant numbers, yellow perch have adapted to this readily available food source and the perch are not as lake-bottom oriented as they have been in the past.
“A lot of times, the bigger fish in the school will suspend up off the bottom,” Barnhart said. “There are those days when fishing on the bottom works, but you don't have to bang the bottom all of the time to catch the nicer fish. Anglers who only fish with the same methods day after day and don't try anything different tend to have some pretty frustrating days on the water.”
Barnhart recommended using a slip bobber and bringing the bait four or five feet up off the bottom. He said on those outings when fishing shiner minnows is not producing perch in numbers, he's seen Sabiki rigs take a lot of fish. These simple multi-hook rigs have flies or some kind of flash material dressed over the hooks.
“Daring to be different can really be insightful,” he said. “One of the best perch fishermen I know will keep changing things up, using different rigs, trying different practices, until he finds what works. The lake changes and the fish change their habits, too, so as fishermen we need to be able to adapt.”
Hartman said he expects the perch fishing to improve as the water fleas become less prevalent.
“I’ve personally noticed that on my most successful perch fishing days, the perch normally have fish in their stomachs or their stomachs are empty,” he said. “And when I really struggle to catch perch, they normally are packed full of water fleas.”
First Published September 10, 2022, 4:00 p.m.
