Finding Yellow Perch

P erch Fishing

Finding Yellow Perch

Finding good numbers of yellow perch is fairly easy. You can usually
cast a piece of a worm around any dock and catch perch. If you have
fished a lake with good populations of perch, you know how easy they
are to find. It seems like they are every where. When you are looking
for the jumbo perch, it takes more skill than walking out on the dock
and throwing a worm into the water.

Perch love to travel in schools and the fish are typically the same size
and age. If you are catching all smaller fish, you need to keep moving
to try to find the schools with big perch.

Spring
In the spring, perch move out of deeper water and head towards the
shallows to begin their spawning. Some fish will travel many miles to
get to their spawning sites, while others travel to the closest bay from
their wintering areas. Perch will be looking for sand, rock, or gravel
bottoms to spawn. Locate bays, islands, rocky points, and shallow
areas with scattered weeds.

Summer
When the perch are done spawning, most fish will linger around their
spawning bays for a few weeks. Fish can easily be found in 10 to 25
feet of water. Once the water warms, fish will go deeper for the cooler
water. You can find big schools of perch along the thermocline in the
summer. Perch prefer a water temperature between 65 and 70
degrees, so if the water is very warm in the shallows, look for the
thermocline in deeper water. Once again, rock and sand bottoms are
best with some vegetation.

Fall
In the fall, fishing gets very exciting again. Schools of perch move to
the shallows again and are much easier to catch. Fish can be caught
around rocky shorelines, reefs, shallow flats, or back in the bays.

Winter
Perch fishing can be excellent in the winter. In early and late winter
many fish will be in the 5 to 10 foot range, however, during the middle
of winter perch are often caught in water that is between 20 and 40
feet deep.

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