As anglers take to Lake Michigan for another yellow perch season, the fishery contains a mix of news.
On the positive side, the last couple of years have featured increasing catches and harvests of perch, especially in the WIsconsin waters of Lake Michigan off Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee counties, according to Department of Natural Resources creel data.
And a DNR netting assessment in 2025 near Milwaukee found eight different year classes of perch, an encouraging sign of sustained annual recruitment.
Further, the perch that survive are growing quickly, according to DNR fisheries biologist Aaron Schiller.
But in historical terms the current population and recent catches of perch are a small fraction of what the lake held before it was invaded by zebra and quagga mussels. The filter-feeding mussels dramatically decreased the amount of plankton available to fish and caused recruitment failure in perch.
Fisheries biologists sounded the alarm and in 1996 the DNR closed the commercial perch fishery on Lake Michigan and reduced the sport bag limit to five perch per day.
The harvest protections helped the perch weather the storm and prevent even greater declines. The fish are persisting in areas of the lake with the best habitat and highest productivity, including near the Kenosha, Racine and Milwaukee harbors.
The species also continues to do much better in Green Bay than in Lake Michigan. Green Bay is shallower and more productive than the main lake and the commercial perch fishery there was never closed.
The DNR provided a yellow perch update to commercial fishers at the June 9 meeting of the Lake Michigan Commercial Fishing Board.
Schiller provided the presentation on Lake Michigan and Tammi Paoli, DNR fisheries biologist based in Pestigo, provided the information on Green Bay.
Although Lake Michigan perch haven’t been the beneficiary of a proactive fisheries management program similar to what has been done for decades to rehabilitate lake trout, the fish haven’t gone extinct, either.
Every few years the perch bring off a larger-than-average year class. One occurred in 2016, Shiller said.
And although perch numbers remain low in historical terms, a November 2025 assessment near Milwaukee found fish from each year class from 2017 to 2024.
In addition the perch that survive the first year of life are showing very good growth rates.
“We’ve got relatively low numbers of (perch) and lots of food,” Schiller said. “We have a recruitment bottleneck but once those fish recruit they are able to grow fast.”
In the 2025 DNR Lake Michigan creel survey, anglers in Kenosha County caught the most perch, followed by Milwaukee County, Racine County and Kewaunee County.
The perch season in the Wisconsin waters of Lake Michigan runs June 16 to April 30. The closure is designed to protect the species during its traditional spawning period.
The regulations, including prohibiting commercial perch fishing on Lake Michigan, are expected to continue.
Due to the relatively low numbers of perch in the lake and budgetary constraints, a couple years ago the DNR stopped doing its winter graded mesh assessment.
However Schiller said if the positive trend continues, the DNR could look at running a simple population model and perhaps calculate a total allowable harvest.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lake Michigan yellow perch providing increased catches but still lower than past
Reporting by Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Paul A. Smith, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
