Here's a pic of a female and male perch of the same age. As you can see the female is longer and heavier not just due to the ovaries. Females do indeed grow faster and reach larger size as the literature says -- at least via my observations.
Notice the eye sizes are exactly the same. For those of you that don't know, fish eyes grow at a uniform rate regardless of how fast or slow the rest of the body is growing. Stunted fish or slow growing fish tend to have what appear to be large eyes for that reason.
The same eye size affirms the fish are the same age (which I know they are).
Today I caught and moved 6 gravid females from my female only pond at the front of the property and moved them one at a time via five gallon bucket to a floating cage in the perch production pond at the back of the property. Good exercise in Mickey Mouse boots and a heavy Air Force parka and pants and going up hill to boot several hundred feed from pond to pond.
I then caught and moved 16 males from a smaller pond that has primarily males in it. All the males exuded milt with a little pressure. Once the eggs are extruded and fertilized naturally in the cage I'll remove the broodstock perch from the cage. The mesh is 1 1/4 inch mesh so any fry will have absolutely no problem exiting the cage.
All fish were caught on grubs (beemoths and butterworms) fished about a foot off the bottom with a slip bobber system. I crimped the barb down. Water depth just off the side of the pier where they were caught was about 11 feet.
