# columbus perch



## claytonhaske (Apr 16, 2010)

I was wondering if there is any where to go fishing for perch around columbus? I searched old threads, and the only place mentioned was said to be private property, I don't want to chance getting in trouble either, so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, clayton


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## puterdude (Jan 27, 2006)

I've caught perch from alum creek,hoover and buckeye in local central ohio.The one's from alum creek & hoover have been relatively small.Buckeye does have some beauties but not many.If I were to pursue them there I'd be selective in harvesting very many of them as it's in the recovery mode now and is just beginning to show some promise in the next few years of returning to yester years when they were extremely plentiful there.Good Luck in your hunt!


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## Capital outdoorsman (Mar 27, 2006)

In short form, the answer really is no. I've caught them in the same lakes as puter and also Indian. Indian is the only place I've seen big ones caught and they are few and far between. Just not a species of abundance and would be very difficult to target.


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## big red (Feb 4, 2010)

i catch several perch throughout the year at indian lake even through the ice.you may want to consider grand lake st.marys also.it's a bit of a drive from cols but,you can get some nice perch through the ice.


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## claytonhaske (Apr 16, 2010)

Capital outdoorsman said:


> In short form, the answer really is no. they are few and far between. Just not a species of abundance and would be very difficult to target.


that's what i thought, to bad too, they are delicious


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## skycruiser (Aug 7, 2009)

big red said:


> i catch several perch throughout the year at indian lake even through the ice.you may want to consider grand lake st.marys also.it's a bit of a drive from cols but,you can get some nice perch through the ice.


ya'll dont want anything to do with lake st marys. there's a major algea outbreak that has turned the water green and killed everything in the lake. you can't touch the water and the whole town smells like ass


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## [email protected] (Dec 22, 2006)

They were stocked into the quarries at Darby Bends lakes a few years ago. No ice fishing allowed there last I checked.


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## mevers (Sep 26, 2009)

skycruiser said:


> ya'll dont want anything to do with lake st marys. there's a major algea outbreak that has turned the water green and killed everything in the lake. you can't touch the water and the whole town smells like ass


That's pretty scary!


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## jbender1000 (Nov 16, 2009)

claytonhaske, pm me...I got a good spot for perch right in Columbus that is money every time and public


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## Eugene (Jun 23, 2004)

Regarding the topic at hand, yellow perch are pretty common to central Ohio reservoirs (especially Alum Creek), but almost without fail they are small and stunted. Another slight exception, Buckeye Lake seems to have a fair population of fair sized yellow perch with interesting coloration. I've only sampled that population with electricity and don't know how easy they are to target with rod and reel, but they are there.

Regarding:


skycruiser said:


> ya'll dont want anything to do with lake st marys. there's a major algea outbreak that has turned the water green and killed everything in the lake. you can't touch the water and the whole town smells like ass


It really depends. Check the EPA harmful algal bloom page: http://www.epa.state.oh.us/dsw/HAB.aspx (and click "Grand Lake St. Marys" at the top of the right column). Wherever they happen to collect it, the Ohio EPA does a great job of making algal toxin data publicly available in timely fashion. In essence, you really don't need to be concerned about recreational contact with microcystin (the most common algal toxin) unless its concentration exceeds 20 ppb. However, note that in the peak of bloom seasons on Grand Lake, it has exceeded 2,000 ppb! Also note that problem blooms had pretty well ended by the end of August.

Saxitoxin and anatoxin could be risky too, but these two are not well studied and no World Health Organization guidelines exist for exposure.

Algal toxins are not very persistent in fish flesh. You're only likely to find high algal toxin concentrations in fish livers (and I don't know anybody interested in eating fish liver). Work done at NOAA's Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab "suggest that while microcystin concentrations in livers could be a human health risk, _even during periods of high microcystin concentration in the water column, microcystin concentrations in the muscle tissue of fish of edible size are not high enough to be an acute threat to human health_." In essence, avoid taking fish directly from a bloom event, and you should be fine.


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## zpyles_00 (Dec 15, 2004)

anyone can say what they want about st marys but i'm telling you first hand that lake should be condemned and the surrounding population evacuated until they know exactly what the health risk are and i'm sure they don't know 100% yet. 

I know a guy who's dog was swimming in the lake and the dog was dead within 2 hours of contact and now he has to go to OSU medical weekly to get treatment for the damage the water did to his nervous system from washing his dog off. not to mention the weird skin irritations he has now. 

i also know a couple bass fisherman who tried to fish the lake before they wouldn't allow boats on the water period who didn't even make it half way across the lake before they were both vomiting perfusely.

of course the stinch has went down and the water isn't as green right now, but its the middle of friggin winter, what do you expect. i'm predicting it will be twice as bad this coming summer and it will take someone paying the ultimate price with there life before the correct action, which should have been taken long time ago, is actually taken. 

they've known this lake has been toxic for 10 years and are just now getting around to doing something about it.


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## claytonhaske (Apr 16, 2010)

even if the lake freezes over, can if still be harmful?


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## FishHunter88 (Nov 8, 2010)

claytonhaske said:


> even if the lake freezes over, can if still be harmful?


Yes.... because even if the water is frozen the toxins from the water can still be harmful...


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## tobeast (Mar 6, 2009)

buckeye is where i would go. i catch them often when the ice is off in the spring and they have got some size thinkin about tryin for them on the ice this year


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## fishintechnician (Jul 20, 2007)

you guys are way off on this we (my company) are there weekly if not several times a week. The algal bloom died out about the end of aug. the microcystin levels are way below harmful and they haven't found any toxins in the flesh just the organs. I am not advocating eating the fish (use your own judgment) but i would have to say that fishing it would not be a problem. We worked with this water all summer and not one of us got sick or anything. I personally witnessed boaters and and SKIERS on the lake when the bloom was going strong. And during the summer the smell was pretty bad but that has died down. By the way the ice is ranging from 4-6'' right now. have to go up fri for more work will check it while I am there and keep everyone updated.

On a side note I have talked to alot of people about the fishin gand they said that they were catching great crappie and gills late this fall.

And mercury is more harmful than microcystin.


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## zpyles_00 (Dec 15, 2004)

i believe what i've seen with my own eyes, i respect the work that is being doing to help the situation and it's more than whats been done in the last 10 years but no one can or will convince me that that lake is in any way shape or form ok to come in contact with. 

too bad we can't ask the dump trucks full of dead fish that were removed from the lake's opinion.


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## percidaeben (Jan 15, 2010)

The Technician is correct not that he needs my validation for perch you won't catch many but size wise their nice NW corner of Antrim April and early may minnow and slip bobbers espiecially round sunset


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## skycruiser (Aug 7, 2009)

It's kinda funny, the situation at GLSM is pretty much all from Bobby Hoying and Jim Lachey. not kiddin


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## TerryMayberry (Dec 23, 2009)

i waskinda surprised when i caught several perch this season at Buckeye and Alum. They were not big enough to consider keeping, but they were there. I was excited to catch them though. Lets hope that this is a sign of good things to come!


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## NewbreedFishing (Apr 15, 2004)

details.....spit-the-toad skycruiser!!




skycruiser said:


> It's kinda funny, the situation at GLSM is pretty much all from Bobby Hoying and Jim Lachey. not kiddin


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## Eugene (Jun 23, 2004)

Again, regarding algal toxins and Grand Lake, check the EPA page I linked earlier. They are really open with the data they collect. Remember, they are the agency that was created in the interest of protecting human health. As I'd said before, microcystin has clearly established guidelines for contact, and those guidelines are extremely conservative. (Other algal toxins are still a bit unknown, but the others also occur with much less frequency.)

This really isn't particularly mysterious. When toxins are measured at elevated/risky levels, avoid activity that would bring you into contact with toxins. Yes, the one dog death was very well published. What was not as well published is that there were as many as three dog deaths that might be attributed to algal toxin (although they were all very old dogs and may have simply succumbed to age) and possibly nine human illnesses this past season. However, all of this occurred when toxin levels could be measured as risky.

What also isn't widely published is that there has never (yes, that's *never*) been a single human death attributed to the ingestion of cyanobacterial toxins. Livestock/Pet death and human illnesses are relatively common, but people tend to be pretty good at avoiding drinking water that looks yucky, and that eliminates much of the risk. The only time on record that human death could be attributed to a cyanobacterial algal toxin was an incident in Brazil when contaminated water got into dialysis treatment and killed several via direct injection.

Regarding ice, if anything, cold water can make the toxins more persistent. However, the toxins have to be present before they can be sustained, and the organisms that make the toxins tend to die off well before the water is cold. They simply are warmwater organisms.

Fixing the problem will require a knowledge-based approach, not a knee-jerk, fear-based reaction.

I spoke on this very issue at the Water Management Association of Ohio conference this very fall. If you're burning with curiosity, I've attached that presentation here. In it, I give many citations to much more detailed info if you'd like to read up on it yourself.

So, check the EPA status of the toxins in Grand Lake, feel free to fish for its perch responsibly, and feel free to keep pressing to see this persistent problem fixed.


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## skycruiser (Aug 7, 2009)

I grew up in Lima and I have many friends and family members with houses on the lake. 
What I heard from everyone of them is that basically there's an island out on lake st marys that they've never let anyone develop due to environmental reasons. Hoying and Lachey lobbied for years to get the state to sell them the property. (Hoying owns one of the biggest commerical real estate firms in Ohio)
Eventually the state caved and sold the land to Hoying and Lachey. That's where the details get a little sketchy, but basically the algea is a result of the development that took place on the island from Hoying and Lachey.


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## NewbreedFishing (Apr 15, 2004)

leave it to a buckeye to lose and screw things up!! 



skycruiser said:


> I grew up in Lima and I have many friends and family members with houses on the lake.
> What I heard from everyone of them is that basically there's an island out on lake st marys that they've never let anyone develop due to environmental reasons. Hoying and Lachey lobbied for years to get the state to sell them the property. (Hoying owns one of the biggest commerical real estate firms in Ohio)
> Eventually the state caved and sold the land to Hoying and Lachey. That's where the details get a little sketchy, but basically the algea is a result of the development that took place on the island from Hoying and Lachey.


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## Eugene (Jun 23, 2004)

skycruiser said:


> I grew up in Lima and I have many friends and family members with houses on the lake.
> What I heard from everyone of them is that basically there's an island out on lake st marys that they've never let anyone develop due to environmental reasons. Hoying and Lachey lobbied for years to get the state to sell them the property. (Hoying owns one of the biggest commerical real estate firms in Ohio)
> Eventually the state caved and sold the land to Hoying and Lachey. That's where the details get a little sketchy, but basically the algea is a result of the development that took place on the island from Hoying and Lachey.


Wow! Don't believe the hype. What happens on the watershed at large is almost always going to be much more impactful than what happens on any single island. Consider the whole volume of the lake and where its water originates. The amount of overland transport of source water from precipitation falling directly onto an island is relatively minuscule, often even negligible. If this one island was the source of the issue, it would be evident in concentrated blooms appearing to originate from the island's runoff. I doubt that even Jesse Ventura would touch this one on cable.


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## smith07 (Feb 28, 2009)

did Hoying and Lachey cause the algae bloom at all the other bodies of water around the state as well?


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## Eugene (Jun 23, 2004)

smith07 said:


> did Hoying and Lachey cause the algae bloom at all the other bodies of water around the state as well?


...or Lake Erie? ...or the Midwest in general?

Wow!


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## HookSet Harvey (Aug 12, 2010)

So was the island sold Windy Island? When I was young we always wanted to take our little blow up boat out there and back but never could courage up the mustard to do it.


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## smith07 (Feb 28, 2009)

to the title of the thread, we almost always catch at least one perch while crappie fishing on Alum Creek


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## claytonhaske (Apr 16, 2010)

smith07 said:


> to the title of the thread, we almost always catch at least one perch while crappie fishing on Alum Creek


thanks for staying on subject.


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