Dink Perch

What if anything do you learn from having dink perch in the area?

A number of lakes I fish seem to hold dink perch in the basins this time of year. Generally along the bottom but drop something down and it looks like Christmas came early. One thought process is that similar size fish school together and you should move one. Another thought process is that if there is bait fish than the predators (Walleye, Pike, Bass & Crappie) should be near by.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks!

Perch are bottom dwellers so I never fished on the bottom. Small perch are a nuisance on the locator but once you learn what they look like on a flasher you can ignore them.

If there are tons of the small fish in an area, the larger fish are most likely eating well without having to work very hard at it.

I was fishing a local reservoir and found a deep depression that bottomed out at 37 feet. The bottom 4 feet of the flasher looked like it was crawling with fish. Sunfish, crappies and perch are common on this water, so when I saw some random marks at around 13 feet that came and went on the flasher in a short time span I decided to target that depth. I did very well on larger crappies for that lake. In the pail of water they were kept in, those crappies regurgitated a mess of sunfish in the 3/4″ to 1 1/4″ sized range along with several perch about 1 1/2″.

I’d suggest studying the water over the masses at the bottom without having the bottom lock feature turned on. Way too many people get fixed on what is being shown inside the locked feature and ignore what might be above by several feet. Your Christmas tree comment rings a bell regarding the incident I just described and I think the dinks at the bottom are so challenged for food that when something starts to fall down thru the water they buzz right up to grab it only to find its not what they can eat and they slowly descend to the bottom again. Its during this descent that I think feeding crappies using water at mid-column grab these little guys for a snack. Either that or crappies in a neutral mood and resting in deep water levels just above the masses grab an occasional small fry if the opportunity comes along. But I think its more that small fish venture into the crappies’ feeding area when chasing a potential meal from above and become food themselves.

Try dropping your jig or lure down to where the top of the small fish pack stops and work that water depth. Those little suckers up our of their safety zone become food and they fewer there are the better the chance that crappies will focus on them, or better yet, your bait.

Not on every lake, but often it seems if you have huge schools of dink perch, it lacks predator fish. The lakes that I consistently catch good numbers of walleye in of 20+” fish, I don’t run into many huge schools of dink perch

Depends on the lake for me. Many times, I will continue to move around until I am on the “edge” of a group of perch and as Tom noted, work the water column. Those little perch will not be bold enough to come up 5-10 feet if you are in an area with predators (walleye/northern etc). On lakes that you know there is a good population of predator fish, finding a big group of perch or other forage fish can be a good first step in identifying where the larger fish will be likely to feed.

IF you are seeing these groups of fish in shallower water, it might be worth moving out to a deeper area where the predators will likely be moving from in order to feed.

If I’m marking a lot of fish but not get anything to bite after 15 20 minutes I’m moving along. I usually figure they are most likely small perch too small for the bait I’m using. I have a small lake I fished for a couple years in a row. One end of the lake is 5 to 7 feet but at the other end is a big hole that runs down to 35 feet. I could get solid marks all up and down the water column but never could get any decent bites. You might get one every now and again usually a small perch or small crappie.

I think the lake got fished out of the decent fish so I’m not going back there for awhile.

I run into these schools of small perch quite a bit on a particular lake when I’m searching for bluegills during the day. Once I confirm its small perch and not gills, I’m making a 25 to 50 yard move, completely abandoning the holes I drilled in a specific area. You can’t get away from those perch once they show up, and the gills won’t compete with them either. If you’re bored though, you can mess with the perch getting them up higher in the water column, and you’ll either attract a bigger perch, or much more likely a bass or pike. At least then its something worth reeling in. If I’m specifically targeting walleye on the same lake, I’ll try to find those same perch and set up near by, because come prime time, there’s always some eyes that are targeting those perch schools.

We were fishing in Shawano WI and catching lots of dink perch. I put my camera down there and the dinks were feeding very aggressively and the larger perch showed no interest in competing for our baits. Larger perch were there but we couldn’t keep the dinks off our baits.