Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - How fast do yellow perch grow and spawn?

I am purchasing 100 1-2" YP for my pond in the next few weeks will they grow enough to spawn in the spring? Also if i stock SMB fingerlings will they eat the YP before they get big enough to reproduce?

John If you added tilapia (TP) this year, my money is on those small fish are young tilapia because as young TP they tend to be bulky on the front half of the fish and appear 'chunky' compared to Y perch. .

One of my favorite nets i bought when i was a kid is a 5’ x 5’ fold-up baitfish net. It has a cheesecloth like netting. You drop it into waters 5’ and under, and wait for the small fish to swim over. It comes up like the mouth of a whale when you pull hard, and invariably will catch something.

The darned thing is near 40 years old and still works great.

John - If you are fortunate to capture a few of these 1/2" long fish. You can go to my member page - left click on my name then click View Profile and use my email contact (lower left side) to email me a copy of the picture. A late spawn of YP is possible, very unlikely and a very rare occurrance. If the fish are really 1" and not 1/2" it is possible the hatch was late this Spring and growth has been unusually slow. 1.5"-2" YP can occur at one year old as noted in the 1 yr old YP growth table above. .

I wish I could help with the ID John. Those are some nice photographs though ... and they show a lot of detail. I don't recall ever seeing that yellow pattern before viewing fish from overhead around the bank. Will be interesting to see the final ID.

Given the sizes of the fish in your images ... I am reminded of a group of anglers who try to catch as many species as they can with angling techniques. Much of their angling time is spent using techniques they call "micro fishing". They use tiny hooks, like size 22 and 24 fly hooks and very minute baits.

I have found it tough to catch bluegill smaller than 2" by angling but using a small hook, (I keep a lot of size 12 dry fly hooks around) and just tipping only the very point of the hook with bait has helped me catch a few. I pull back the moment I see the bait disappear. If the point is also in the mouth, it will hook the tiny fish. I think I could improve the catch rate by going to a smaller hook. Might be vain for 1/2" fish however with a hook as large as size 12. I have never caught a 1/2" fish by angling. Whether it can be done will probably depend in part on mouth size the size of the hook one is fishing with.

A baited or even an un-baited minnow trap might also work.

John - Thanks for providing the pictures. As esshup says positive identification will be best with one out of the water. You will get an education for trying to capture one of these smaller fish. It's harder than it first appears. Try catching one or two in a minnow fish trap baited with bread or broken pieces of pet food. Another option is to use a decent sized fish net with small mesh 1/8", 3/16, or maybe 1/4" for larger ones of 1.5"-2". Lay net in the water and bait it with wet bread or pet food. Lift the net when fish are in the net.

From the overhead picture with fish in the water it is pretty hard to do a correct identification especially when they are smaller. However the fish in your pictures are too bulky on the front half of the fish for them to be yellow perch. YP are slender bodied fish when viewed from above. IMO from what I have seen so far,,, definately not yellow perch.

That there is confirmation of Bill's, esshup's, and 4CP's thoughts on ID. Definitely TP.