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Originally Posted by FASTEDDIE29
There used to be some rather large Perch in that place. Wonder if anyone has caught any recently! You da man Andre!
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There used to be a lot of really big Yellow Perch. People were anticipating the state record to fall from one of the perch from that lake.
But then the big perch just stopped appearing. There are still Yellow Perch in the lake, just not the big schools of humpback jumbos perch there used to be. They're mostly small-medium sized and skinny.
I'm not a fisheries biologist, but if I had to guess what changed I would blame:
a) White perch - I've noticed their population creeping up every year. Maybe the yellows just aren't competing well with the whites.
b) High fishing pressure. Spruce Run is fished hard, every day, all year long. It's suburban location along Route 78 and accessible shoreline guarantee it will receive a lot of anglers and not just the locals. I've noticed people driving all the way from New York to fish there. They're not novice city-folk learning to fish, but slavic-speaking, hard-core anglers who came to New Jersey to fill their freezers!
If it weren't for the constant efforts of the Fish & Wildlife Services to keep it stocked, that fishery would probably have been reduced to sunnies and carp a long time ago.
I suspect the Yellow Perch just aren't living long enough to become jumbos.
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