Poor Man’s Perch

A trolling technique that catches white perch at Lake Wylie also will nail anything else that swims in the lake.

I pressed the record button on my micro-cassette recorder so Charlie Johnson of Flat Bottom Guide Service could tell me about poor man’s trolling when we were interrupted by the cry, “Grab the rod behind you,” followed by another outburst: “There’s another one on the middle rod!”

“Tony, it looks like you’ll have to do double-duty,” Charlie said. “Try to record me and catch fish at the same time.”

These welcome interruptions occurred throughout the day at Lake Wylie where David Johnson of the Championship TV Fishing Show had put me in touch with his brother Charlie, so Charlie could show me to the exciting white perch fishing at the lake.

Dave planned on filming the action for his fishing show, but he was having the same problem as I was — those frenetic white perch wouldn’t stop biting long enough to let either one of us do our job.

Charlie Johnson, who lives near Wylie and has fished the lake for about 40 years, inadvertently introduced me to what he and his brother call “poor man’s trolling.”

His initial intent was to slow-troll for white perch with a double-hook rig consisting of a 3/4- or 1-ounce bank sinker tied to the end of his line with two No. 6 bait hooks set above the sinker about a foot apart from one another. The hooks are baited with crappie minnows.

“It’s a simple rig,” Charlie Johnson said, “and it’ll catch anything that swims in the lake, including bass, crappie, catfish, stripers, and white perch.

“Some of my clients get nervous when they see those little hooks, but those hooks will hold fish up to 10 or 12 pounds. I know that from experience.”

His other gear consists of several long B’n’ M crappie jigging poles and open-face spinning reels filled with 6-pound-test line. He ups the pound test if he’s fishing for stripers.

Since white perch are mainly open-water fish, similar to striped bass and white bass, we began slow-trolling with six rods on the main river at the N.C. side of the lake, a short distance from the Buster Boyd Bridge where we launched that morning.

The idea was to move slowly while letting the bank sinker bounce off underwater humps and extended points, two likely places for white perch, until a school of fish was located. Once a school was located, Johnson said we could load up on white perch in a hurry.

“White perch love to bunch up at points and humps,” he said. “The bottom can be sandy or composed of gravel. I’ve also caught them from red bank points.

“Early in the year, feeding sea gulls often indicate the presence of white perch.

“As long as there are irregularities along the bottom, the white perch will be there. It’s nothing to catch about a hundred of these fish once you find them.”

Fishermen shouldn’t be hesitant about filling their coolers with white perch as long as they plan to eat the fish, even though the practice of catch and release is fashionable.

White perch (called “Waccamaws” in eastern N.C.) are incredibly prolific breeders; a 1-pound female will release as many as 150,000 eggs in one spawning season while the males release millions of sperm. The fish reproduce without pairing off. The sperm are attracted to the eggs and fertilize a large percentage of them.

Commenting on the reproduction of white perch in his “Fishing Encyclopedia,” A.J. McClane said: “This haphazard fertility rite is one of the most prolific nature has devised because the ratio of hatched eggs is enormous in comparison to other fishes.

“The annual production from a single pair of large white perch can more than replace all that are caught by fishermen.”

To illustrate, at Indian Lake, a 72-acre lake in Worcester, Massachusetts, used as a stocking source for white perch, some 47,000 pounds of perch were removed prior to thinning operations.

The subsequent thinning operation resulted in the removal of 10,000 pounds of white perch the first year,1500 pounds, the second year. As a result, the size and length of the perch increased. Often white perch populations run rampant because of underharvesting, and the fish become small and stunted.

“Other states have also substantiated the fact that the chief problem in management of white perch is over-population and stunting and that thinning operations are needed to keep the fish under control,” said F. Philip Rice in his book, “America’s Favorite Fishing: A Complete Guide to Angling for Panfish.”

The lack of fishing pressure for white perch causes other problems.

Their abundance can translate into smaller white bass populations at bodies of water where the two species exist.

Piedmont Research Coordinator Christian Waters said studies conducted at other states indicated white bass tend to diminish in numbers whenever large numbers of white perch are present.

Although studies of this nature haven’t taken place in North Carolina, Waters said the feedback he’s gotten from fishermen and from his own observations seem to support this phenomenon. As white perch populations have increased at lakes Wylie, Norman, and Badin, the numbers of white bass seem to have declined.

“White bass and white perch inhabit the same open waters and compete for the same forage,” Waters said. “Both are ravenous feeders.

“It appears that white perch are more efficient at foraging than white bass and so we end up with remnant populations of white bass and large populations of white perch.”

In short, fishermen shouldn’t be apprehensive about filling their coolers with white perch for the dinner table where the fish serve as delicious table fare.

“There is no finer fish to eat than the white perch,” McClane said.

What fishermen must be careful about in filling their coolers with white perch is to be certain the fish are white perch and not white bass or small striped bass. There is a 25-fish creel limit for white bass in N.C.; there is no creel limit for white perch. There are no size limits for white bass or white perch.

There are size limits and creel limits for striped bass, but they vary at different lakes.

Distinguishing one species from the other can be tricky.

One difference is the stripes. The stripes on striped bass are distinct and usually continuous; the stripes on white bass are often faint; young white perch have pale, longitudinal stripes similar to stripers, but by the time they reach adulthood and eating size, they lose these markings.

Another difference is the dorsal fin. Striped bass have separated dorsal fins as do white bass. The dorsal fins of the white perch are connected by a thin membrane.

White perch are also smaller in size. The average white perch is 8- to 10-inches long and weighs 1 pound or less. Fish weighing more than 2 1/2 pounds are rare. The world record for white perch is 4 pounds, 12 ounces.

We never got to fill up our cooler while slow-trolling for white perch.

Gusty, ever-shifting winds raised white caps at Wylie and prevented Charlie Johnson from controlling his boat and properly fishing his double-hooked rigs.

“We need to troll where I see balls of shad and fish arches on my depth-finder,” he said. “And those places are in open water where it’s the roughest.”

To combat the wind, Johnson resorted to what he and his brother call poor man’s trolling, an expression David Johnson heard on “Bill Dance Outdoors” when the famed bass angler anchored above a brush pile in the wind to fish for crappie.

The expression also captures the essence of how the Johnsons fish for white perch in a stiff breeze.

The essential equipment for poor man’s trolling is a navy anchor, also called a sand anchor, and a fishing buddy with a strong back.

“The sand anchor should have a couple of feet of heavy chain near the anchor itself so the anchor can get a better bite,” David Johnson said.

Since he was the one with the strong back, he let out the anchor rope gradually near the extended point his brother had chosen to fish. The anchor grabbed and held fast in about 23 feet of water as the boat moved over the point. Then we set out the double-hook rigs at various depths for white perch.

The strong winds rocked the anchored boat and that movement imparted more action to our baits which resulted in plenty of fishing action from white perch.

The three of us quickly slipped back into our childhood, gleefully yelling to one another that another rod was going down as we scampered about the boat grabbing the bowed rods and swinging the fish into the boat.

David Johnson caught the mayhem on film for his Thursday television show at WHKY, TV 14 Hickory, at 7:30 p.m. and for his web site at www.fishwithdj.com where the show can be downloaded.

Most of the fish weighed a half pound, but a few pushed the 1-pound mark.

The fish put up a good scrap on those long willowy crappie poles, and occasionally the underwater battle went in two directions at once when a “double” was hooked Charlie Johnson’s double-hook rig.

“I’m still looking for that elusive 2-pound white perch,” he said. “Fish that size are in Wylie.”

When the bite slowed, David Johnson pulled up the anchor rope for a moment, then dropped it again, and by the time the anchor grabbed, we were sampling another segment of the point.

Occasionally, the anchor couldn’t withstand the force of the wind and lost its grip, and the boat slipped off the point into more than 30 feet of water. It was easy to tell when that happened — the bites stopped.

The wind never ceased during the trip. Nevertheless, poor man’s trolling saved the day, though none of those 2-pounders bit.

Although our outing took place in late March, white perch can be caught year-round and with a variety of baits, including small spoons, jigs, spinners, lures, and strips of cut fish.

“If the white perch are biting, you’ll need more than a couple of dozen crappie minnows if you want to have enough bait for the day,” Charlie Johnson said.

White perch often mingle with white bass and striped bass, and he said it’s not unusual to catch those other fish.

“Big crappie can mix in with them, too,” Johnson said.

One prerequisite for our trip was to stay on the N.C. side of the lake since I only had a N.C. license. There is no reciprocal license agreement between the Old North and Palmetto states for Wylie, whose shoreline wiggle-waggles along the border.

Charlie Johnson knows Wylie good enough to stay on one side of the lake or the other if you don’t wish to purchase an additional license.

He also guides for just about any species that swims in Wylie, not just white perch.

Charlie Johnson can be contacted at (803) 831-8435, or visit David Johnson’s Web site and look for the ad for Flat Bottom Guide Service.

Neither slow-trolling nor poor man’s trolling require any casting skills, which may translate into a carefree family fishing fun. Add the fast action from white perch and it’ll be a day on the lake everyone can enjoy.