Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose raising perch

anyone raising perch out there? How long before you eat them? do they winter well?

What kind of perch? (yellow, bluegill, coppernose, pumkinseed, etc.) ALso need to know what state your in.

For God's sakes Zach! There really is only one perch when it comes to pond culture! It's the Yellow Perch (Perca flavescens). Where you southerners get calling members of the sunfish family "perch" I don't know! LOL

No insult intended -- just a little pet peeve I have.

Since Mooose is from Canada he can only be talking about Yellow Perch. Moose, I raise feed trained yellow perch in one of my ponds along with other species. They are quite hardy and grow well even if they go off the feed. However, unless you have lots of predators they tend to over reproduce and stunt. In may case I have purchased all females which precludes that. (The females grow fastest and get the largest anyway) I purchased close to 100 approximately 9 inch females from a grower in Ohio that raises them in an RAS in spring of 2002 (I have my own hauling tank),and they put on 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches by that fall. However, growth has slowed a little but they are still healthy plump fish.

Since they are a coolwater fish I doubt if they would do well too far south. But Canada is just right.

Moose,

Bill Cody is experimenting with yellow perch in a pond. Hopefully he will come on and give you some ideas.

Bill?

Yeah thats true. We even call rio grande's perch.

Cecil, how do you tell the differance between male and female yellow perch? Is it as pronounced as the differance in Bluegills?

Jimmy,

The most accurate way is to sort them during spawning time. The males will expel milt with some pressure wuhile the females will be either really distend with eggs, or if they have recently passed the eggs their bellies will be as flat as a quarter. But even if a fish is distened it is imperative you check for milt. You can also check fish with a capillary tube carefully pushed into the uro genital opening during spawning, but if you don't know what you are doing you can damage the fish.

My supplier raises them in an RAS (Recirculating Aquaculture System)and he hand checked each one out of a tank after he netted them. I don't believe there were any mistakes as I have seen eggs deposited in the pond, but none were fertilized that I know of and I have not seen an perch fry.

A few of us are raising yellow perch. I am working on a magazine article about raising perch in small ponds.

Length of time to market size is dependant on number of days where the water temp is above 55 degrees. Perch grow best at 68 to 74 degrees F. Depending on how far north into Canada you are will depend on how long it will take for growth to 8" in an outdoor pond. From egg to 8" fish will take about 2.5 to 3 years for your relative region. But if you start with some 4" to 6" perch in the spring you might get some 8" females by the late fall if they can feed heavily on an unlimited food source. In your area, you will do real good to get one inch growth per year after 8".

They are very tolerant of low oxygen levels when other fish are dying. Overwinter better than many other fish. However they do need oxygen; higher levels of 4 to 6 ppm or greater are best for growth.

Thanks Cecil and Bill,
Cecil, I won't be inserting anything into the perch other than a fishing hook,or a fork after they are cooked.

Bill, I look forward to the raising perch article. Will perch decimate an established fathead population in a small pond? I was thinking of using my smallest pond as a perch rearing pond. Also, what size do perch stunt at?
Thanks in advance!

Jimmy; Article is not going be submitted to Pond Boss Mag. It will be in Farm Pond Harvest Magazine; Fall issue due out in Sept 03. They requested I write a perch raising article for ponds. The current rough draft is way too long and I am waiting for an answer if they want a one or two part article. Story was 3 articles.

When the population increases beyond the original stocked fish, perch can easily decimate a fathead population even with moderate amounts of weed cover. We have seen it happen numerous times. The original complement of stocked fish can decimate fatheads in about 18 to 24 months or less if no weed cover is present. This time frame is variable depending on number of perch and fatheads per acre.

I have seen in a local pond that when the owner transfers fatheads into the pond w/ perch, the perch attack the fatheads like bass. They chase them to the immediate bottom area and dive into short (2"-4") weeds or the sediment to get the fatheads. We have seen 6.5" perch eat a 2.5" fathead which is a good sized adult fathead. Just tonight I had a 5.7" perch eat a 2.6" perch in a bucket. We have found that in small ponds, when the perch grow to 10" to 12" long, they are pretty heavy predators on the YOY perch of 2" - 3" long. Trouble is that most pondowners do a heavy harvest on these big perch and they should be harvesting the 9" to 10.5" ones and allow the bigger ones to stay in the pond as YOY perch predators.

We get the fastest growth by stocking pellet trained perch and feeding them high protein pellets. Perch grow really well this way.

Yellow perch, as with most fish, will stunt at any size. Stunt size is when the food becomes in short suppply. Too many fish not enough food. A fish will grow as long as it lives as long as it has food to excess. Whenever food supply is low growth slows or stops depending on how much food is available. However a fish's eyes continue to grow even in stunded fish. This is how you can tell a fish is stunted; eyes look too big for a fish of that size.

I catch Yellow perch all the time in the larger lakes, in South Carolina, and Georgia. Would these Yellow perch do well in a Georgia Lake of 12 acres?

Success of perch in Georgia depends. The strain of yellow perch in GA may be different than those in the northern states. The SC & GA strain could be more tolerant of higher water temperatures. These southern perch may not live as long as those in the "north". If the southern yellow perch get to acceptable sizes for you then they might survive in GA ponds.

A word of caution. Before trying perch in
your pond test the water temperature at the depth you are catching them esp during mid summer. It is possible that some of the lakes or deep ponds in the southern US have deeper, oxygenated cooler water refuge areas for the perch. Your pond may not have these areas during the hot summer. It is important to know how much oxygen is present is the cool deeper waters. Just because the water is cool temperature doesn't mean oxygen is present.

If you have LMB in the pond, stock real large perch (10+") to help survival from predation until spawning. With LMB very few young perch may survive to harvestable size.

I have a small pond, very small actually, 50' round or so 5 foot deep in the center and it has perch in it. I dug the pond a few years back, cleaned out an old pond actually during a dry summer. I had dug until dark with my dozer, the next day I came back to dig deeper and it had a foot of water in the bottom, so I was out of business. I let it fill and after a short icefishing stint that winter I dropped 22 perch and one crappie in it thru a hole in the ice. I figured they wouldn't have a chance since it was so small. That was 3 years ago. This past winter in NW PA we had probably some of the best ice fishing conditions in years, snow was deep too, I never touched the pond either. This spring I fished it a little as I do every year and caught tons of little perch, about 5 nice hefty adults, and...1 black crappie. I plan to seine the pond once the water temperatures cool off this fall, take a bit of a census and even cull some fish if they are as plentiful as I think. The crappie stays, as do all 10" perch or above, but the little guys must go. I never figured this pond would be so much fun or produce much of anything, it was intended for deer to have a watering hole for summer, it does that too though, so I guess it is a win-win. As far as I am concerned there is only one fish to raise for the fry pan and that is yellow perch. I know the big bass are fun to catch, but yellow perch is my all time favorite.

Been a long time since I've been to the board and I'm shocked at all the YP posts.

I've got a pond in the Texas Panhandle east of Amarillo that we stocked with most likely stunted perch caught out of a population in New Mexico. Tried to get some hatchery raised fish shipped in but it was next to impossible (without owning a mint) where I'm located in Texas. Called the NM Game and Fish people about catching some and hauling them back to Texas. His advice, catch as many as you can and come back for more. This particular population came from about a 160 acre trout lake. We caught close to 80 4-6" perch in less than 2 hours. It was post spawn so sexing the fish was difficult. We hauled them back to the eastern Panhandle. That was two years ago. It's hard to say at this point what the success of the experiment has been. The YP were stocked at about the same time as the BG and the fingerling LMB. We catch YP regularly however it's difficult to determine based on size and appearance if they are reproducing or if we are still catching the stunted NM adults. Another year or so should tell the tale. In spring we catch pre-spawn female balloons that would indicate some reporduction but I can't verify it. They are certainly not keeping pace with the BG from a reproduction standpoint but that's to be expected. I do hope they come around. They are certainly the best table food potential in the pond.