GREAT OUTDOORS: Erie perch will be biting for months

Whenever the weather cooperates with fair skies and calm seas, the period from late fall through spring can offer outstanding catches of yellow perch close to shore and in the shallow embayments connected to Lake Erie. However, according to Ohio Division of Wildlife Lake Erie Fisheries administrator Travis Hartman, creel surveys reveal that the majority of anglers mainly pursue the species during the traditional late summer months of August and September. Unfortunately, the explosion of spiny water flea numbers in the Western Basin of the lake has attracted the majority of the feeding attention of perch in recent years during the late summer and early fall. Catch rates improve when this exotic zooplankton species population wanes. There have been some good catches lately. I had a chance to get out perch fishing with Charter Captain of the Year Don McGee, Lake Erie Charter Boat Association President Capt. Paul Pacholski, Capt. Dave Whitt and Bob Hineman in mid-October. The 1- to 2-foot waves from the southwest were quite tolerable as we anchored between the Toledo Water Intake and the Toledo Lighthouse. Within a minute or two, I had my first fish of the day, but it was only about 6 inches long -- one of hundreds of perch that were tossed back to grow more. The flurry of activity that provided the up & down action that we always hope for lasted about 90 minutes, which allowed us to start off being picky about how big perch needed to be to keep. During that feeding frenzy, most of the keepers fell into the 8½ to 9½-inch range, my favorite size to fillet and eat. I have found that perch over 10 inches long have knife-dulling harder scales to cut through and need to be trimmed or "zippered" like walleyes to remove the pesky "rib barb" bones that can poke at the throat when swallowing the fried fish. As the bite slowed down considerably after 10 a.m., our standards began getting a little looser and more fish in the 7½-inch range were kept. I have admitted numerous times that I would rather eat the fillets of a 7-inch perch than air. While perch over 8 inches are better, my sharpened 4-inch Rapala knives allow me to make a close shave to their skeleton and any perch over 7 inches is possible to fillet. When it was time to return to the marina, the clicker displayed a count of 130 keepers in the cooler for us to split. It was the first substantial catch of perch that I got to land since about the same time last year with Capt. McGee. Perch can be found along the edge of rock piles, shallow structure and along contour lines near shore, or next to vegetation where it occurs in the bays and harbors right up until freezing temperatures hit. After ice-up, perch continue to be sought by ice anglers looking for them at East Harbor, White's Landing, Catawba and around the islands. With consistently strong yellow perch hatches seen in the Western Basin, the next several years looks solid for the species here. What isn't certain is where they are coming from. Some Lake Erie fisheries researchers have speculated that a substantial portion of the young of year yellow perch caught in the summer trawling surveys may be coming from spawning stocks in Lake St. Clair or the Detroit River. It is generally understood that adult yellow perch make well-known seasonal movements from shallow to deep and then back to shallow water annually in response to water temperature, spawning season and food resources. To better understand these migrations, Hartman says that the Ohio Division of Wildlife has initiated an acoustic tagging study to better plot the seasonal whereabouts of yellow perch in the lake. Once it is better understood where to find them, perhaps more anglers will begin to participate in a new perch fishing season from late fall through spring.