How would you go about finding the perch?

[juddfish]

I was looking on the DNR websites' lake finder at a lake that I fish and discovered an abundant amount of perch in the lake. Just under 140 perch/net! Most of the fish are around 10"+ and I would like to know some techniques to locate these fish and put a few in the boat. The lake is only 400acres and is bowl shaped with a max depth of 20'. There is a couple of points and a rock shoreline built up along the highway. There is no midlake structure, its just a big flat. I have caught a few jumbo's in the past fishing for walleyes and have just released them assuming not many were in the lake. There is virtually no weeds in the lake due to a high bullhead/carp population. Is there any places I should look for this time of year, depths, presentations etc. Thanks for the help!

~juddfish

[Chris Haley]

I would start fishing a jig minnow combo around the edges in 5-6ft of water. If you have any flats in that depth range, check them out also.

[Guest]

Perfect time to slow troll a #5 shallow runner shad rap. Try the black/silver pattern.

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www.millelacsguideservice.com

[Guest]

I would use a very small spinner with a nice piece of crawler at the end. Put a split shot about 18 inches above the spinner.

On a calm day, you should see the perch, playing on top of the water.

If you have gulls around, they should also lead you to them

[juddfish]

Thanks for the tips guys! I think I might give it a try tomorrow. Sounds like shallow is the place to find the perch. There is no flats in the 5-6ft range. The shoreline is a fairly fast break off into about 10' or so. The North and South ends of the lake are fairly sandy, I was thinking this should be a good place to try. Hopefully I can keep the bullheads off and catch a couple jumbos.

~juddfish

[juddfish]

Well I gave it a try today! What a beautiful day on the lake! In the first 10 minutes of fishing I landed a 21 1/2" walleye on jig and minnow perch fishing. I thought I couldnt have asked for a better start. Luck changed, trolled all the way around to the other side of the lake before I caught another fish and it wasnt even a perch. Nice northern about 5lbs. I fished all different depths in the lake not catching any perch then I decided to go out from some sand banks on the shoreline and i got a nice fish on right away, it was another walleye about the same size and got off at the boat. In the same area I had what i think were perch follow my lure to the boat. They could have been small sunfish but there arent many sunfish in the lake. Those fish came from right up against the shoreline. Fished all day long and never caught one perch!!! It was really weird out there today with the calm water. There were carp everywhere along the surface, I wish I would have brought my bow and arrow with instead of my fishing rod cuz i would have had a very entertaining day. The other weird thing was the amount of minnows! Ive never seen so many in my life. The whole way around the shore out into about 8' of water or so there was small minnows along the surface. So them perch are probably so full they dont want to even think about eating. Another thing was the water was pretty dang clear but there was an awful lot of algae floating. The one shoreline stunk pretty bad. Amazingly I never caught one bullhead and usually i catch several monster bullheads. So i dont know maybe theres not so many perch in there. I had the aqua view down for a while and never seen a fish, lotsa stuff floating down by the bottom. I might haveta try it again sometime, it was the first time on that lake this summer so it was fun even though the fish didnt bite. Once again thanks for the help guys and if u come up with any more ideas for me it will be helpful.

~juddfish

[mistermom]

Only half kidding here. If I want to catch perch I go after walleye with a crawler presentation of one sort or another. I end up catching tons of perch accidently almost every time.

mm