How to know it
A yellow perch is gold to yellow with six to eight dark vertical bars down the side, two separate dorsal fins and orange lower fins on a big male in spring. It is the walleye's small relative, with the same shape in miniature but without the teeth and without the white tail tip. Nothing else in the region looks like it.
Where it lives
Perch live in lakes of every size and in slower rivers, but the big ones — the jumbos — come from large lakes and bays with hard bottoms and lots of food: Green Bay, Lake Michigan's bays, Chequamegon Bay, Mille Lacs, the big walleye lakes of the north. They school by size over sand, gravel and the edges of weeds, feeding on insects, small minnows and crayfish, and they move as a group.
Through the year
Perch spawn in early spring, soon after ice-out, in shallow weeds and brush, draping long ribbons of eggs over cover. Through late spring and summer the schools roam the flats and the first break, usually in the same depth band, and a guide finds them by moving until the first fish bites. Fall concentrates them again on deeper flats. Winter is perch time across the region: schools over mud basins and sand flats, found by drilling holes and watching the flasher, and some of the biggest catches of the year come through the ice.
How guides fish for it
Light tackle over the bottom. Small jigs, spoons and dropper rigs tipped with a minnow, a piece of crawler or a waxworm; a slip bobber in shallow weeds in spring; a drop-shot or a perch rig with two hooks over a flat. On the big bays it is often drifting or anchoring over a school found with the electronics. A perch guide's skill is in locating the right school — perch school by size, so finding the jumbos rather than the small ones is the job — and in keeping the boat on it as it moves. Through the ice, a guide will have a heated shelter, a flasher and a pattern of holes over the flat.
Handling and release
Easy to hold, with a mild spine in the dorsal fin. Perch are kept more than any other fish on this list, and the fillets are the point of the trip.
Rules
Bag limits vary by state and by water, and the big bays often have their own. The Minnesota DNR and the Wisconsin DNR publish the current rules, and a guide will know the ones for the water you are on.
