Northwest Fishing Reports

I'm looking to catching a few good large eating perch to fillet. Any suggestions?

Lake Washington and Lake Whatcom. I've also caught big ones out of the Columbia.

Lake Washington, Potholes reservoir, Banks lake. Now with Lake Washington you ll have to do some experimenting, I heard that a 2" all white curly tail grub with kokanee smelly jelly in 40' of water, during the winter is key. Sounds kind of funny but it was in the F&H news for WA state. Potholes has been kind of iffy the last couple years, but this is supposed to be the year. I have never actually fished banks for perch but I hear its just a perch Factory over there. But I fished Duck lake a few weeks back and hammered the perch. Most of them were bigger than 12". We caught them on everything from worm to perch meat, and from 3" jig to floating rapala

American Lake has some lunker perch. My wife caught a couple of 14 inchers there a while back. In Mason County, Mason Lake has some very nice perch in the 12 inch range.

During the winter we catch a lot of 12"-14" perch through the ice at Fish Lake by Lake Wenatchee.

Banks lake has some nice ones. I found these on a blog. Caught in June of this year.
http://s176.photobucket.com/albums/w183 ... erch33.jpg

Banks has some serious fat Perch in it. We will catch a few while walleye fishing. If you are a serious perch guy you would be able to catch some there but Banks has a lot of Water to cover. Last week a buddy of mine caught a 13 1/2 inch perch but it was the only one they caught all weekend.

We got 2 this past weekend both around 11 inches and really chunky. They are both split into fillets sitting in my fridge waiting on me to get off work tonight to fry them up along with some walleyes.

I keep hearing Lake Washington is the best Perch Lake on this side of the mountains but I have never fished it. I am sure there are plenty of perch lakes around but it is tough getting anyone to talk about them because they don't want the fishing pressure that will soon follow a post on Washingtonlakes.com

Good fishing.
Joe

If you are looking for somewhere a little closer to Spokane, try Diamond lake. Its been very good for us in recent weeks. No monster perch, but we have caught lots in the 9-11 inch range.
Eloika has been pretty good this summer too. Mostly 8-9 inchers though.

I used to fish Lake Samish as a kid when my grandparents owned property there. 90% of the fish i caught out of there were perch, at least on the north side where we were. And there were lots of them. Worms worked well.

Cowlitz County's Silver Lake. Two weeks ago I caught one by accident while bass fishing. He hit a ChatterFrog and the hook caught him on the cheek. He was 11 or 12 inches long. Don't know if there are that many though.

cavdad45 wrote: Cowlitz County's Silver Lake. Two weeks ago I caught one by accident while bass fishing. He hit a ChatterFrog and the hook caught him on the cheek. He was 11 or 12 inches long. Don't know if there are that many though.

thats a huge silver lake perch - they are mostly dinnnks in there.

I second lake washington. Even from shore you can hit some big ones in the right places during the warm months.

I have to agree on American Lake. Only place where I've ever caught a 2lb perch. That to me brings me back there every summer to try and break that record.

I guess that Silver Lake perch could have been a fluke. Didn't pursue them further as my goal was bass.

yea im sure its possible there are a population of larger ones but i have yet to see any on a regular basis. I am always seeing/catching ones in the 4~6" range.

I wouldn't call them huge but the last time (2 weeks ago) out on Lake Sammamish we caught them up to 13 inches. I will share GPS coordinates if wanted as I couldn't find that house/dock combo again if I wanted to. East side of the lake about half way up in 20-25' of water.

The fishfinder showed the bottom black with fish so close together that there was no separation between signals.