As he does every year my brother, Pat, comes over from Spokane to visit and fill his ice chest with perch fillets. We pretty much only fish the south end of Mercer Island as I have stated in previous posts as the fish seem to be the same size no matter what area we have tried. Last year saw a big drop off in size as we caught very few in the 12"+ range (we actually do measure them) and this year is following the same pattern. The only difference we have found this year is that the fish are nice and thick and cut out a great fillet in the 8" to 10" size. We literally could not put more fillets in the 8 qt bags he took home. One big difference I also noticed this year is the size of the schools we see on the finder - some schools 20 ft thick and over 100 yds long. Takes a lot to feed this biomass and many times the fish "puke" minnows as we bring them in. I have to wonder how the perch and smallmouth affect the Sockeye fry that come out of the Cedar River. The finger always seems to be pointed at the cutthroat and I am sure they do feed on Sockeye fry, but........

If you decide to chase perch this time of year a couple hints. Search for the schools stating at the 45 ft depth. As the water cools (right now we showed 54) the fish will go deeper. Use the dropshot method with the Huckabee knot (see it tied on Youtube) and always fish the bottom. We use 1 oz white jigging spoons for the bottom weight and this and the hook above are tipped with perch meat with skin left on. Many times the bigger perch prefer the spoon.
For me an electric knife is a must for cleaning although I have seen guys clean perch just as fast with a good sharp fillet knife.