The past few years, Lake Erie’s delicacy, the yellow perch, has been in short supply. But in late July, things started to pick up. Hot spots included cans B and D off the Camp Perry National Guard firing ranges, the waters north of Kelleys Island, the Toledo harbor and lighthouse, and the city of Toledo’s water intake.
Reports said anglers were catching their 30-perch limits, including some that were 8 to 10 inches. One charter captain in the area was quoted as saying he’d “never seen the perch fishing this good this early.”
Since 2014, there have been “pretty good” yearly hatches of perch in the Western Basin, said Brian Schmidt, a fisheries biologist with the ODNR Division of Wildlife, who is stationed at the Sandusky Fisheries Research Unit.
Central Basin hurting
But in the Central Basin, east of Huron, there have been no good hatches since 2012, he said. That is, until you get to the far eastern part of Lake Erie, near Buffalo Harbor. The perch fishing there has been good the last two years.
“Both ends of the lake are doing well, but the middle is kind of languishing,” Schmidt said. “There are no young fish coming up to replace the old, so the population is on a downswing.”
That means perch fishing in “the middle” has been languishing, too. But lately there’s been a glimmer of hope.
Eastlake
Capt. Vitas Kijauskas owns Linda Mae Fishing Charters and Sightseeing Tours in Eastlake, which includes the Express and the Popeye. He’s also a captain with the U.S. Coast Guard, a merchant marine, and ran Discovery Dive Charters & Tours for nearly 30 years. About a month ago, his customers started catching “half walleye, half perch — the perch on a slow troll” in about 50 feet of water near the mouth of the Chagrin River.
“It’s starting up over here,” Kijauskas said. “The perch are right outside the river.”
Last year, the perch fishing was “really good mid-May to mid-June. This year was not so great, so we went right for walleye,” he said. He is hoping that in the next few weeks his charter boats will be “just going for perch.”
Some anglers in the area have limited out, he said, with the majority of the perch ranging between 11 and 14 inches. That will change pretty soon, Kijauskas said. In June and July, the big perch keep the little ones at bay because they’re protecting eggs. Now that there are no longer eggs to protect, anglers will probably catch a mixture of the larger perch and the seven inchers, he said.
Danger from walleye
It appears that a lot of the walleye in the area have moved to lagoons about 10 miles away, he said. But he still tells his customers to not only bring minnows and gear for the perch, but a second rod with worms and Erie Dearies. That’s in case the walleye show up.
“If the walleye come in, it will shut down the perch fishing right away,” he said. “You have to get rid of the walleye.”
Perch may not be the walleye’s favorite food, but you sure can’t tell when anglers are hauling them in. Even if they stop short of eating them, walleye can beat up the perch pretty badly, Kijauskas said.
Three years ago, at the beginning of the walleye “epidemic” as he calls it, his customers caught about 300 perch that had their tails shredded or missing, or their sides lacerated, because “they were being eaten by walleye as they were being caught,” he said.
As a diver, he has observed that phenomenon from below. Walleye are not only attracted by the motion of perch going after bait, but also by the sound of the perch biting on it. He’s heard it himself under water. “It sounds like someone flicking a plastic straw with their finger,” he said.
The walleye can’t resist the sights and sounds and want to get in on the smorgasbord. This sends the perch to the bottom to cower in fear of the larger predators, Kijauskas said.
Scientists are not sure why Central Basin perch hatches have been poor. It’s possible they are being preyed upon by walleye, whose population increased a whopping 257% between last year and this year. Plus, there were record hatches in three of the last five years, the largest in 2018. But there are 120 million walleye in Lake Erie, and perch are not at the top of the walleye’s preferred list, Schmidt said.
The latest report from the Lake Erie Yellow Perch Task Group, of which Schmidt is a part, found that walleye in the Central Basin primarily dine on gizzard shad. The study — which involves examining stomach contents — showed that shad made up 72% of the walleyes’ diet, with some smelt and shiners thrown in. All other fish, including yellow perch, made up only 9% of their consumption.
Lake conditions
Schmidt says lake conditions may be the more likely culprit in low hatches. If the water is too hot, or too cold, or there’s not enough oxygen, it affects survival rates — not only of the hatchling perch, but the things they feed on. The yellow perch’s diet is half fish and half invertebrates, including zooplankton and the mayflies and midges that people find so annoying.
In fact, the latter food preferences make it tougher for anglers as the perch spread out looking for insects. One of those invertebrates could be part of the low hatch problem, Schmidt said. An invasive species, the spiny water flea, can outcompete native zooplankton for food. And as their name implies, they have a long spine that small yellow perch, and the minnows they feed on, can’t swallow.
The yellow perch group looks at data from trawl surveys done in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Ontario, Canada, to determine populations and set commercial and recreational quotas. Not surprisingly, the commercial quotas in the Central Basin have gone down in recent years, but the recreational limit of 30 perch per person per day remains the same — so far.
If the recreational limits are reduced in the Central Basin, that means the commercial quota will have gone to zero. It all depends on what the yellow perch population is this year and in the future.
“We don’t fully know yet,” Schmidt said. “The lake is always changing, always trying to find a balance.”
Business is hurting
Chris Sidoti, trustee of the New Sandusky Fish Company, is hoping the lake finds a balance soon, and that her family’s business can hang on until it does. On the shore of Sandusky Bay, the company sells perch and walleye sandwiches and dinners, and those fish by the half pound and pound. It’s completely carry-out, no restaurant seating.
In past years, New Sandusky would get between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds of yellow perch in a delivery, Sidoti said. In the past two years, they’ve been lucky to get 300 to 400 pounds, bought from one of the few commercial fishermen allowed to net perch on the U.S. side of Lake Erie.
Walleye netting is not allowed on this side of the lake, so supplies of that fish comes from a commercial outfit in Canada. Sidoti’s father started the business in 2000, and she and her sisters have been running it since he passed away in 2004. They have been freezing the perch they don’t use immediately, but are concerned there won’t be enough to last till their traditional closing date, Oct. 31.
“We’re open seasonally, like an ice cream place,” Sidoti said. “We hope we have enough to last till the end of the year, but we don’t know.”
