Siver and Golden Perch Fishing Guide

Golden Perch and Silver perch, especially in the jumbo sizes, are a notoriously difficult fish to catch on lures. There is a theory doing the rounds that their diet changes from fish and crustaceans to include a lot of weed and other vegetable matter as they get older. In impoundments, these fish often suspend in midwater around the plankton blooms and you can sometimes find them with a good depth sounder.

Silver perch prefer small lures that get down under the surface. I have enjoyed the most success on silvers with a green Tilsan Minnow trolled in deeper areas of large impoundments. When the fish are young they live alongside weed-beds and also favour the cover of downed timber. Scorpion 35 and Scorpion 52 lures as well as the Poltergeist in green tiger, brown trout, frog and fluoro green work well. Poltergeists are only just small enough, but their crash diving characteristics will put them down in the silver perch strike zone in a hurry.

By Kaj Busch (Bushy)