Quote Originally Posted by slabsrus View Post
I spent my childhood, and a large part of my adult life, fishing for perch and scuba diving in Higgins Lake in Northern Michigan. Higgins Lake is known for it's yellow perch fishing, and being able to go under the water, I observed a couple things over the years. One thing I noticed, in both fishing and diving, is that yellow perch are often schooled in what appear to be age classes. The younger age classes often have huge schools, in the hundreds,up to possibly a thousand or more, whereas the older fish are often in smaller schools. There will sometimes be several years with large schools of older fish, but when the word gets out, and the anglers start keeping large numbers of them, a couple age classes can be depleted and cause a shortage of good fish for a few years. The largest schools of big perch, those in the 11 - 14 inch range, were most often caught, and observed while diving, in waters between 40 and 80 feet deep. Of course there are always a few exceptions. Higgins Lake is crystal clear, which allows for weeds to grow in some areas as deep as 12 -15 feet. One of these areas is on the edge of drop into 22 feet of water. The weeds come up from 13 or 14 feet of water and are 6 or 8 feet tall growing right on the edge of the drop. There were many days when we would see schools of 200 or more jumbo perch hanging just out of the weeds, suspended over the deeper water.
Thanks for the information. I'm a novice to perch. I m intrigued by the shear #s of them in this lake. No one fishes for them. I see huge schools of them all over the lake. I have fished many of them and only caught dinks. There has to be jumbos in there. I am sure they are separated from the dinks. I will target smaller schools I will also start using my underwater cam.
Thanks for the help. I will keep you updated.
John