Finding yellow perch in a body of water can seem a bit daunting at first, but if you understand that yellow perch love to be found around aquatic vegetation then searching for them can get a little bit easier. If I’m looking for yellow perch in a new lake that I’ve never fished before I often look for bays with the most aquatic vegetation in relatively shallow.
In water temperatures warmer than 50 degrees yellow perch can typically be found in 10 to 20 feet of water or even shallower. The best part about yellow perch is that they tend to school up so you can find them by idling around with a fish finder or by simply fan casting your favorite bay.
When the water temperature dips below 50 degrees there’s no need to worry because yellow perch are extremely active during colder water temperatures. The benefit to colder water temperatures is that the yellow perch school up much tighter than before. Sometimes the yellow perch can even be is found as deep as 50 feet of water. Techniques that are very effective for catching yellow perch at these depths are vertical jigging with a blade bait or spoon.
Yellow perch spawn in the spring of the year when water temperatures get to about 42 degrees. When water temperatures start to stabilize at 42 degrees the male yellow perch move to the head waters of a river before the females. Once the water temperature reaches 45 degrees the females, which are the larger cows head in to the same areas to spawn . The spawning activity takes about two weeks to complete in often times anglers can see hundreds of yellow perch milling around the same area at a time .
Make sure that you consult with local regulations to ensure that fishing for yellow perch in these areas during the spawn is legal. As quickly as the fishing frenzy during the spawn begins, it ends with the large females leaving first and heading out to deeper water. This type of fishing can be fast and furious and these larger females which show up can can literally show up overnight to spawn.
