They may be taken during every month of the year with the hook, being bold biters and among the most voracious of all fishes, devouring the spawn and young fry of their own species with savage avidity, and being among the most deadly foes to the trout preserves, owing to the rapacity with which they ransack the spawning beds.
They are in the main a lively and active fish, roving about in small bands or shoals, sometimes swimming high and near the surface, leaping merrily at the flies and smaller water insects, and sometimes, especially in clear, rapid scours of gravel-bedded rivers, sweeping along the bottom gathering the small, red brandling worms, of which they are very fond, caddises, and other water reptiles, as well the spawn of such fish as use these localities.
The larger fish will, however, often select stations, such as the lee of a large stone at the tail of a ripple, especially under the umbrage of trees growing on the bank, or among the piles and timbers of mill-dams or sluice-ways, whence they sally out like the pike or trout on any passing prey with great velocity and accuracy of aim. Still even these are decidedly gregarious, as one is never found singly in a hole, such places being invariably frequented by such band as it will liberally support, who rarely stray beyond its limits, and prey, for the most part over the same fishing-ground, and in the same course.
This propensity is taken advantage of by the angler, since, when he has once struck upon a well-stocked haunt, while the fish are in the humor to bite, he will be very apt, if patient and skillful, to take the whole shoal without the loss of a single fish.
The growth of the yellow perch is slow, and appears to be proportioned pretty accurately to the size and character of the waters which he frequents. In small, swift running brooks, or little spring-ponds or mill-dams, he rarely exceeds a few inches in length and a few ounces in weight, partaking generally of the green and silvery type of the fish. In estuaries and large rivers, in the pellucid tarns and lakelets, which are dotted so beautifully through all the uplands of the eastern and middle states from Maine to Pennsylvania, in the vast expanses of the great northern lakes of Canada, in the giant rivers of the west, they attain far more rapidly to a great size, three or four pounds being a run by no means unusual, and individuals being not unfrequently taken up to five, six and seven pounds, when they are very firm, fat, and in capital condition for the table.
They may be caught in all months of the year. Mr. Brown considers that they “may be had in the largest quantities and in the finest condition from May to July;” but from my own experience, which has been limited principally to the lakelets of Maine, to Greenwood or Wawayanda lake, in Orange county, New York, to Lake Hopatkong, desecrated into Brooklyn pond, in Sussex county, New Jersey, and to some of the north-eastern streams and ponds of Pennsylvania, I should say that late in the autumn—
When the maple boughs are crimson,
And the hickory shines like gold,
And the noons are sultry hot,
And the nights are frosty cold;