Jumbo yellow perch from the Great lakes are often considered individuals in the 10" to 12" size range. YP of 10" to 12" are not all that big compared to bigger YP that can be raised in a well managed pond.. Jumbo perch is sometimes a word gimmick used by some fish farms to promote the sale of their perch. Examples of Lake Erie jumbo perch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-MeMc9FNZghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJi3YuSOZOoHuge Monster Yellow Perch
It’s a matter of opinion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4xNVHkVm5gI am confident that your jumbo perch (YP) will produce fertile, viable eggs. I suspect that your jumbo YP eggs are hatching but the fry or fingerlings are not surviving. Lack of hatching success is a possibility.
Here is an experiment for this spring.
When you see some YP egg ribbons clip or break off a small or short section of eggs (1" to 3") long. Put the eggs in a 1 to 4 quart jar or similar container. Glass will allow best observation. If the egg cluster has white spots in it the eggs are not fertilized. Aquarium bubbler pump would help hatching process. . Plan on making making same temperature, regular water exchanges daily or every other day over the next 6 to 9 days. Allow eggs to incubate in water around 55F to 65F. In 4-8 days you should see small dark spots appear in the eggs. Dark spots are eye spots of developing fry. If eggs do not develop fungus, the cluster at hatching will gradually disintegrate. Look for what looks like small slivers of glass on the bottom of the container which are the YP fry. If you can get fry, the lack of YP recruitment in your pond is due to something other than poor quality eggs.
It is possible that the YP you bought were a graded size of perch and you bought mostly all female perch with very few males present. Male YP are smaller than females and buying one size of YP from a fish farm could bias your sex ratio of YP. If you have mostly female our our egg ribbons may not be getting well fertilized. Ideally for best fertilized egg ribbon production one want several males for each female.
