Bilgewater
4/29/2016 9:41:00 PMPerch are the most abundant biomass in American. Matt Polacek, a WDFW biologist, told me:
“From 2012 lakewide gill netting catch (nearshore) the species with the highest biomass were Yellow Perch (40%), Rock Bass (31%), and Rainbow Trout and Smallmouth Bass (12% each). Our offshore netting in showed that yellow perch also had the highest biomass (88%) followed by Rainbow Trout and Kokanee (5% each).
We repeated the offshore survey in 2014, which indicated yellow perch (65%), Kokanee (20%) and Cutthroat Trout (12%) had the highest biomass of the total catch.”
I suspect it would make no difference at all how many perch you caught and kept, ready to spawn or not. I also suspect that because of their large population, perch consume a fair number of the 450,000 kokanee fry that WDFW plants annually in American, usually in June.
Thank you for the report and photo.