I have been noticing for the last couple of weeks fish coming to the surface (ripples). Come to find out these are perch. I have never seen perch come to the surface before?? Has anybody else seen this?

Every night about dusk I see that and I see my Fatheads jumping out of the water!! I think they are enjoying a nice snack!! But seriously I have seen this often.

If they're feed trained they may be more likely to be conditioned to surface feed if they were fed floating feed. Is it during low light periods?

My perch are conditioned to feed in the evening just before dark. That's when they come up. However I am training them to feed in the morning instead to allow for more condusive water chemistry parameters in the morning vs. the evening. This is due to my high density of fish.

Yes, it is durring low light conditions... Not sure if the fish were feed trained. I got them from Stoney Creek in Grant, MI. I am picking up some more tormorrow, I will have to ask.

My perch feed heavily both 6 a.m. and 8:30 p.m.

The low light is the only time they'll do it. During the day I can throw pellets out like crazy and they're not interested.

Cecil, please educate me regarding more conducive water chemistry parameters in morning vs. evening.

Thanks

Interesting thing is my Perch were not feed trained. They still do the low light dusk dawn type of feeding and it has been near the surface due to the Fatheads locations.

Dave,

When you have high densities of fish like I do, when you feed them you get an ammonia spike and as they feed they comsume dissolved oxygen. The idea is to have this ammonia spike and D.O. consumption in the morning when D.O. is on the rise vs. just before dark when D.O. is on the decline. The higher the D.O. the better nitrification works too.

Also feeding once a day to satiation for larger fish is better than feeding twice a day and adding twice the nutrients.

Cecil, is it too late in the year for me to start conditioning my yellow perch to do the same as yours?

My biggest problem is that I'm rarely at my farm at daybreak, so it's hard to tell if they're eating all the goodies.

Bruce,

No it's not too late. You may have to skip a few feedings and then only offer them food at daybreak. However I question you have densities to worry about ammonia spikes etc. My 1/10 acre trout pond will have 500 lbs. of trout by fall. My 1/10th acre perch pond that receives nutrients from the trout pond has about 70 yellow perch of a minium weight of 1 lb. My bass pond had over 200 bass of at least 2 lbs a piece along with smallmouth and bluegills.