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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