My first yellow perch, today.

[Ranger690]

Eric and I put in at Aylett on the Mattaponi this afternoon and ran down a ways. Eric landed the first on a minnow. Then we watched two guys in a bass boat, put on a perch clinic just one cast behind our boat. They invited us over and we politely refused. After we could take no more watching we moved and caught some perch on a 1/4 gold colored silver buddy.

First of the day, Eric.


Then a crappie for me.


Then my first yellow perch.


We caught maybe 10 perch all small. Most of them were males and were leaking. Water was 47°. A very nice afternoon. You would never know we have snow coming. It was my first time on the Mattiponi river. Very cool.

Dayton

[Barnacle Bill]

Way to go Dayton! After we get our lessons on catching shell crackers at LCR in June we'll get together and I'll show you where to catch white and yellow perch in the middle of the summer.

[squirrel hunter]

Dayton, Thanks for the pics. Those first of the year are always special, no matter what size.
I don't know anything about your river but I bet if you were catching leaky males those fat she-fish were very close by.
Can you tell us any more about the bait you used and presentation?
Also maybe a description of the river. It sure looked pretty in the picture.

[Ranger690]

This was my first time on the Mattiponi river. It was not much more than a creek up this far. It is north of Richmond and south of Tappahanock. My first perch attempt. We ease down river until we found a fishing looking outside bend. Marked some suspended fish (maybe crappie or gizzard shad). We anchored and put out 4 minnow rigs on the bottom. Then 3 corks with minnows suspended above them. Tide was just beginning to go out. No luck for a while, then caught the first one while winding up to move. Looking back this should have told me they wanted it moving. So, we stayed. Then nothing. I kept pitching one of the cork/minnow rigs out to the side and let it swing with the current. That one caught the one crappie.

The bass boat came up behind us, made small talk and were casting small orange head/yellow or chart. Bodies (hair I think). They caught maybe a dozen. Then one of them switched to a gold colored silver buddy. And caught some more. We pulled up and moved closer and began catching ours on the a ¼ oz Gold silver buddy, right on the bottom.

It was almost a 90° bend in the river with the deeper water on the outside. Strange thing was there was an eddy there. From the look of the bank and current you couldn’t really see it. And you would not have expected it to be, from the look of everything. The fish, mostly all males were on the bottom in the eddy. We moved out into the moving water and made some drifts but caught nothing the there. The eddy water was 15-18’ deep.

Now I am new to this. So if we go back, and the same thing happens again, where might we look for the bigger fish (females?) to be? Should we look for more slack water? Deeper/shallower? Swift water? Do they like current? Structure?

Thanks for the help. Crash14me2 lives close by. I am going to have to get with him and see what we can do.

Dayton

[Barnacle Bill]

Yellow perch are normally bottom feeders. You need to keep your bait down there with them.