12-15-2014, 09:21 PM
[#0000FF]Perzackly. Perch need structure in the form of past or living vegetation upon which to spawn. In Deer Creek they only bring off a good spawn when springtime water levels are well up into the weeds on the flats by Charleston. That has not happened for several years in a row so there is no pending year class waiting to make anglers happy.
The other big downer for the perch is that the small smallmouths form big wolfpacks and hunt down the baby perch hatchlings and vacuum them up before they have a chance to even get big enough for the other perch to eat.
Before smallmouth hit Deer Creek the perch could get by on the low water cycles...and produced enough young to feed the predators as well as leave some to grow bigger for fishermen. There were huge schools of perch all over the lake. Didn't matter where you fished or with what. Since then the perch have become a rarity...except for the occasional small school someone will find and harvest. The 50 perch limit on Deer Creek means little. I'm a pretty good perch jerker and I doubt I have caught 50 perch from Deer Creek in the last 5 years.
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The other big downer for the perch is that the small smallmouths form big wolfpacks and hunt down the baby perch hatchlings and vacuum them up before they have a chance to even get big enough for the other perch to eat.
Before smallmouth hit Deer Creek the perch could get by on the low water cycles...and produced enough young to feed the predators as well as leave some to grow bigger for fishermen. There were huge schools of perch all over the lake. Didn't matter where you fished or with what. Since then the perch have become a rarity...except for the occasional small school someone will find and harvest. The 50 perch limit on Deer Creek means little. I'm a pretty good perch jerker and I doubt I have caught 50 perch from Deer Creek in the last 5 years.
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