I will jump in here too....I am the ecologist (and GIS manager) for a large private property in WI. We have 50ish acres that are landscaped and we have two 0.75 acre ponds that I manage. Our "west" pond is actually a retention pond that we had to put in for our westward expansion, so it gets all the run-off from about 40 acres of land, both landscaped and ag.
My background is in fisheries/aquaculture, and I earned my M.S. down in Arkansas for this. I was born and raised here in WI, so I'm a tried-and-true Yellow Perch guy...with one heck of a scientific bent to life.
So, back to "my" ponds and some background. Our west pond was stocked back in 2008 with YP and a handful of LMB and really had no "management" other than algae and weed control until I showed up in 2015 (this is in the middle of well-manicured landscaping...aesthetics are #1). Well, our winter was fairly hard in 2015, and in May I started seeing LMB turning up on the edges....not just "bass" but real monsters for this area! The smallest bass I pulled out was 23" and the largest was 28"!!! We're talking State record size bass here! And I pulled 8 of these out of there, all dead.
No one had fished this pond really, save for maybe a couple kids on a couple of occasions and then from the only pier on the pond. Well, I hate to see those fish wasted, and man would I have loved to hook into them....but they must have been the last of their kind in the pond because the YP population exploded in 2015 and the fish actually came out of hiding....people here had thought there weren't many perch in there, but I am assuming they were all hiding in more secluded areas with the constant threat from some rather large mouths trolling the edges for lunch.
Our perch spawn in late April every year in this pond. This was taken on 4-27-15, and I counted 27 ribbons in <12" of water that week.
I was able to confirm all age classes of YP during the 2015-16 winter ice-fishing season....and we kept a few of the nice ones.
We have some people coming out this Friday to do some fishing, and one guy just happens to be the head chef of a certain ritzy golf club we have over here....so I'm hoping we get enough for the pan!
I am currently working on some fishing regulations and log sheets for them to record counts and lengths, and a small map for the general areas they are caught. I am thinking right now, for regulations, they can keep 10"+ fish and some 7-8"...thinking 10-12 total perch each. Then leave the 8-10" fish go to become the next size this summer.
Depending on what I see being caught this winter (population structure-wise), I may have to start thinking about putting some predators back in....probably walleye, so they don't have a good chance of reproducing and causing more management work like bass and pike end up doing. I am managing this and our "Friday Fish-Fry" pond, with a goal of being able to catch several classic WI Friday fish frys-worth of 10"+ perch, on several occasions each year.
Anybody else getting hungry right now?!?!
Anyway, I look forward to seeing more data coming in and contributing in any way that I can.
