![]() Sort through the perch you catch and keep only enough for a meal or two, not the whole season! Anglers have to realize that you don’t have to catch a limit of perch or panfish to have had a good day fishing. ![]() Some of this decline is due to competition from white bass and other species, but personally I believe that over-harvesting and year-round perch fishing are the real culprits. The last decade has seen the perch population go up and down and the size of the perch seems to have gotten smaller without many jumbo perch being caught. Add to this the many anglers that were out on Lake Mendota ice fishing for perch in the winter and you have a tremendous amount of pressure on a limited resource. ![]() You could go out most days and find a “perch fleet” of boats trying to stay on top of the roaming schools of fish. During the early 2000s it was nothing to see hundreds of perch anglers regularly perch fishing and many fishers were always catching their limits. Now, the daily limit is 25 fish of any combination of panfish and many anglers think that they have to have a limit to have had a good day on the water. Remember too, that the daily limit of panfish used to be 50 fish. Many anglers then and now think that there is a limitless number of panfish (perch, bluegills, crappies, and white bass) and that there’s no problem with catching and keeping their limit of fish every time that they go fishing. The average size of yellow perch during the hey days on Lake Mendota were 10 to 12 inch fish with the opportunity of a few “jumbos” over 12 inches.īut, the perch population numbers have dwindled since the early 2000s. But, the great perch fishing diminished due to over-harvest, loss of habitat, competition from other species, and predation has taken its toll on the younger cousin of the walleye. I love to eat fish and I put perch up near the top with walleye and bluegill. It wasn’t like North Dakota’s Devils Lake, but it was very good fishing for good size perch and anglers from all over the bordering states would come to Madison during the summer and winter to catch one of the best tasting fish there is for the frying pan. If one goes back to the 1960s and 1970s, Lake Mendota was considered one of the premier perch lakes in the Midwest. Madison’s Lake Mendota has always been a good lake for yellow perch.
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