Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Yellow perch spawning

Ron, Did you see a lot of perch egg ribbons this spring? Did they keep spawning slowly over several days or did the cold snap shut it down?

Knobber did you have any perch eggs yet? We have had brisk days and wind and cold nights so I suspect water temps are stable and not coming up.

I may not have any perch left but also have not seen any ribbons yet. I'm about 15 miles north of Ron Crismon.

Noob question here... I have mature YP in my pond, caught a few nice ones this winter. Ice out was March 22nd. I haven't taken water temp yet but I understand YP start spawning at 50, I will check tomorrow. What am I looking for when looking for YP egg ribbons? And where is the best place to look i.e. shallows, wind-swept side etc? Feel free to point me to another resource if a good one is available. Thanks

No eggs that I can see. Water temp was just 40 deg F yesterday.

As I mentioned my perch were 3" in June. So, not sure they are mature enough to spawn. Since stocking, I have not seen a one swimming around nor floating dead. Is this common? Do they stay in deep water year round? Are they still there???

They are bottom dwellers in most cases, not often seen other than on a hook with a worm, unless feed trained, then they will frequently be seen sucking pellets from the surface.
One item of interest is spawning habitat, dense fresh tree limbs (Cedars work ok) in 2-3' water, or in my case, a few days after adding weighted tumbleweeds, they look like they are covered in toilet paper in the next week. Keeping the ribbons off of the bottom is key, they seem to be better at successful hatches up off bottom with good flow around them. I do see them blow ribbons on my Gee minnow traps as well, they like a sturdy structure up off of bottom.

Just spotted first ribbons of the year in our pond. All along the south side wrapped on anything that will hold them.
NW Ohio.

March 19th thru the 26th. I transferred a guesstimate of 100,000 perch eggs or more to a small pond in hopes to have better luck feed training. Waiting to see what happens with the smb this yr. Looks like it will be later on compared to last yr. Water levels are at most of the ponds overflows.

I think my YP spawning has ended for 2025. Water temperature was 55F yesterday. YP usually do not spawn at water temps of 55-56F. A few exceptions do occur. Depending on pond conditions many female YP in a pond will reabsorb their eggs when some conditions are not good for egg laying.

That means it is time to take the kids/grandkids fishing and see if you can catch one of those fat females and break the existing pond record for yellow perch!

We had unusually cold days and nights. We have had heavy cold rain and some cold spells. Not much sunlight. But still no perch ribbons. Must be no perch left in the pond. I'm thinking this year is a good time to focus on adding structure and building forage options again. Would love to find time to find/net some local mudminnows or BNM for another starter forage species.

My daughter is still catching some jumbo leftover golden shiners from the original stocking around 10 yrs ago with hook and corn bait.

Still struggling to get the remaining unwanted jumbo goldfish out as they have become quite hookshy. I was hoping not to have to use the selective -carpicidal chemical treatment, but if they can't be netted or caught on hook then they will continue to grow and reproduce. They are big enough that it would have to take a very large LMB to target them.

Knobber, the YP are pretty good at staying out of your view. I only saw mine because they were pellet trained. And even then you rarely got to recognize them, but only you recognized their swimming pattern or their surface attack pattern. They would rocket up from the bottom and make a quick flip-turn at the top and rocket down so without a high speed camera you couldn't be sure it was a YP.

I did see as the YP got larger and more accustomed to coming to getting the pellets in the same place they would kind of coast up to the surface and take it down and do their little flip turn and head back down where you could actually make them out. I also found that they liked to hang out under my large turtle float. I think it gave them shade all day and a natural cover in about 6' of water. If I threw the pellets on top or and on the sides of the turtle float they would come up under it and feel more comfortable showing themselves. So consider putting a floating raft/dock or even a floating square out there and feed around it and the YP may predictably come up.

I made my turtle floats out of a scrap piece of garage door that was laying around. The door is clad in aluminum which doesn't rot/rust and it has thin layer of foam insulation in between to help it float. I had some old rescued commercial carpet squares that I screwed on top to give the turtles something to grip their claws into when climbing up. I also left the carpet square on the edges sticking over about 6" which lets them droop in the water and the turtles will often just float on the edge of the carpet square in the water before climbing on board.

Question on the YP egg ribbons.
I’m in NW Ohio, a couple weeks ago it warmed right up into the 70’s and looked like it was spring. Last week temps dropped right back down and now it is below freezing every night with daytime temps high 40’s into the 50’s. Looks like it’s going to be that way for another week and a half at least.

Question is are the perch eggs still going to be OK? I can’t imagine the cold few weeks is good for them, will this be a low recruitment year?

Just asking because it’s a new pond only a few years old, the adult perch are very nice size and it looked like we had good spawns the last two years I can see 3”-5” young ones at times.
We only stocked around 180 total to start with, 150 4” from local hatchery and bucket stocked around twenty larger ones wanting the pond to build up numbers on its own naturally. Pond is around an acre and pretty deep with decent structures. Thought after this spring we might start keeping a slot limit size for a couple fish fries but now I’m not sure if I should just wait another year?

I did not see a single ribbon this year. But I’ve had two big rain events. Each time I’ve got to the pond after its cone up. If any ribbons were out, they quickly were under 18” of additional water. We did catch a few YP a few weeks ago. None had eggs. Most all had milky release with some gentle pressure. Sometimes the 6 yr old grand daughter gave more than gentle pressure. The two largest YP didn’t have eggs or milk. I suspect they were females that had already deposited ribbons. We used to have a consistently full pond and I always saw the ribbons. The last few years it’s been consistently low. It’s now almost full. Hoping it stays that way.

H20fwler - Air temperature and Water cooling after the eggs are laid has little detriment to the developing eggs other than slowing the hatching time. Dr. Dave Willis at SDSU and a graduate student studied the colder water affects on YP egg development and wrote about it in PBoss magazine. Actually the the colder water temperatures did not cause a significant decrease of egg hatching. My pond water temperature yesterday Apr 08 was still around 53F in NW Ohio and similar to and just slightly higher compared to the water temps of most of the egg laying. The main things that will affect egg hatch are increased siltation from watershed runoff that suffocates eggs and the location where the eggs were deposited. Best egg hatch will be if the ribbons were stretched out among old weed stems or hanging on brush or structure where moving water can circulate around the ribbon keeping eggs well oxygenated. Eggs laid in a gathered clump on the bottom has poor egg hatch except for the eggs on the outside edges of the cluster.

The first early Yellow perch egg ribbons are showing up now in central Ohio March 11 to 15 after a couple warm days. There was a report that Ron Crismon also saw a couple early ribbons. I had a ribbon Mar 16 and water in the shallows was 44F this morning with a few snow flurries.

After a few days that didn't get above freezing, and a few nights in the low teens, I bet the rest of the spawn in delayed. We will kiss the mid to upper 60's Fri and Sat, but then it's back to the 40's for highs after that.

I made the mistake for a while too so honest mistake, but to help out fellow MI pond-meister Ron, his last name is spelled Cris-mon (tempting to type it as Crim-son) No perch eggs here in Grand Rapids yet but also lost mature perch last year in a late winter heavy rain shock to the pond event. Restocked some this fall but had another heavy rain shock hit under the ice (through the street runoff) and had some additional mortalities. Some of the stockers may be mature enough to have eggs this season so we'll see.

Spawn in s.w. mi. For me started about a week ago. Still seeing more show up. Collected a bunch and moved to a smaller pond. i bought a plankton net to see what i have for fry when they hatch. I have a bunch of little critters in the water. Sent some pics to cody and he explained what they all are.(bill is the AI of our time). Pretty sure he has forgotten more than ill ever know. Thanks bill your knowledge is incredible!

You should see his library!!