Perch: Action-Packed Fun, What Fishing Should Be
Story and Photos By Keith Sutton

When it's fish-a-minute fun you want, nothing can beat perch-jerking. Some call it kids' sport, and that it is. Fishing for smaller members of the sunfish family — the redbreast sunfish, pumpkinseed, longear, warmouth, green sunfish and spotted sunfish — is a great way to instill a life-long love of fishing in children. It's fast, fun and exciting — just what youngsters want.

Nevertheless, perch-jerking is a wonderful pastime adults can enjoy, too. The "perch" or small sunfish are great fighters on light tackle. Countless numbers of these fish swim in nearly every lake, river, creek and pond in the country. And because these panfish are so prolific and abundant, they're ideal to target when you want to keep a big mess of fish to eat.

Best of all, perch-jerking provides a great alternative to "serious" fishing with its expensive gadgets and wearisome technicalities. If you'll let them, sunfish can lead you back to what fishing is supposed to be — simple, relaxing and out-and-out fun.

Redbreast Sunfish
Next to bluegills and redear sunfish, redbreasts are the most popular members of the bream clan. Perch-jerkers love them because they fight tenaciously and are delicious on the dinner table.

A bright splash of color across the breast and belly gives this panfish its name. However, a redbreast's breast isn't always red. It may be vivid yellow or rust-colored. Regional names include yellowbelly, yellowbreast, robin, red perch, tobacco box and longear.

This sunfish's most infallible identification marks are its extremely long gill flaps. These are solid black, and those on male fish are usually longer and broader than those on females. The longear sunfish also has long, black gill flaps, but theirs usually have a whitish border.

Redbreasts thrive in diverse waters, everything from cold mountain streams to warm lakes and brackish coastal marshes. They are, however, primarily stream dwellers in most of their range. From Virginia northward, they often live in smallmouth bass streams. In other regions, you'll find them inhabiting warm, slow-moving rivers like Florida's Suwannee and crystal-clear creeks like those in Texas' Hill Country.

In streams, redbreasts prefer deep pools out of fast current. They often hide behind boulders and logs and in undercut banks around tree roots. In lakes and ponds, look for them in deep, weedy areas with sand or mud bottoms.

Redbreasts feed primarily on snails, small crayfish, insects and small fish. Like redear sunfish, they are primarily bottom-feeders.

Any cover in a foot or more of water is a potential redbreast hideout. Cast upstream to fallen trees, boulders, brushpiles and ledges adjacent to deep water, or along the edges of coontail, willow shoots and other vegetation. Also, target areas under overhangs, root wads and logs along banks.

The best spots are in or near long, deep pools, so when you encounter a big hole or long stretch of deeper water, work it methodically. Drop successive casts about a foot apart, covering a variety of depths until fish are found.

The best bait might be right under your feet. Tiny crayfish, nymphs, scuds, leeches and insect larvae often can be collected by carefully flipping rocks in the stream. Worms and small minnows are good, too. Impaled on a small hook and drifted through a deep hole, all these baits entice redbreasts.

Redbreasts also are more prone to feed at night than other sunfish. Catching them after dark is one of sunfishing's most unique thrills.

Pumpkinseed
Of the pumpkinseed, Henry David Thoreau once wrote: "It is a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, looking like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint."

Indeed, this panfish is uncommonly beautiful, displaying silvery-green sides with orange and red flecks and iridescent blue and emerald reflections. The underside is gold to orange-red. Streaks of aqua radiate across the face. The black gill flaps have whitish margins and red tips.

The "pumpkinseed" name is derived not from the orange spots speckling the sides, but rather from the body shape, which resembles the outline of a pumpkinseed. Nicknames include common sunfish, kivvy, yellowbelly, round sunfish, quiver and sun bass.

Unlike many sunfish species that reach their greatest sizes and numbers in Southern waters, the pumpkinseed is primarily a fish of Northern lakes, ponds and streams. Its original range extended from southern Canada, the Great Lakes states and New England down through the Atlantic Coast states as far south as Georgia. It now has been transplanted to many Western areas and is frequently caught in the Pacific Northwest, California, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado.

Pumpkinseeds prefer quiet, clear lakes and streams with stands of aquatic vegetation. They generally live in cooler waters than most other true sunfish and tend to inhabit thicker vegetation than bluegills and redears.

Many anglers were introduced to fishing by catching pumpkinseeds with a worm or minnow floated under a bobber. Small jigs, flies and surface poppers are attractive lures in spring and summer.

One of the nicest things about pumpkinseeds, however, is their propensity for pronounced winter activity. Ice fishing is very productive, especially when using mealworms, maggots, catalpa worms and other small larvae for bait. Fish these on or near the bottom, using 2- to 4-pound test line with a small split shot added to sink the bait.

Move the rod tip up and down 3 to 6 inches periodically, then allow it to remain still for a time before repeating this jigging action. Fish may bite when the lure is moving or still. Look for the line to move in the ice hole or the rod tip to twitch. Set the hook by lifting the rod tip quickly and firmly.

Longear Sunfish
It would be hard to imagine a fish more beautiful than the longear sunfish. This gorgeous creature blazes with a rainbow of colors. Both the male and female sport long, black, white-edged gill flaps that protrude like ebony earrings.

Beauty isn't the longear's only gratifying attribute. This little buster is an aggressive warrior, too. Yet most panfish anglers busy with bigger fish pay it no mind. Colloquial names include sun perch, cherry bream, pumpkinseed, red-eyed sunfish and tobacco box.

Writers almost invariably describe the longear as a fish of crystal-clear creeks and small, gravel-bottomed rivers. It is, indeed, a characteristic inhabitant of such waters, but longears also are abundant in oxbow lakes, meandering delta rivers and other lowland waters. They adapt well to life in all sorts of man-made impoundments.

On small rivers and creeks, longears frequent shallow- to medium-depth pools and slow runs with barely perceptible current, being particularly fond of rocky ledges and undercut banks. In oxbows and lowland streams, they hang out near cypress knees, logs and other woody cover. Lake and pond fish gather around weedbed edges, steep rock banks and around piers, docks and similar structures.

Longears feed primarily on insects and small fish, and are easily caught on small baits and lures such as crickets, worms, jigs, spinners and tiny crankbaits.

Warmouth
The warmouth loves swamps, bayous, oxbows and other warm, sluggish waters with dense timber, brush and/or weeds. Its proper name is derived from the "Indian warpaint" pattern of facial bars radiating backward from its reddish eyes to the gill covers. Some people still call it by an old name — warmouth bass. In other places, nicknames include mud bass, weed bass, stumpknocker and bigmouth perch.

Coloration varies extremely. Warmouths from swamps may be mottled a dark purplish-brown and appear entirely different from the golden-brown specimens of clear waters.

One nice thing about warmouths is their predictability. You'll almost always find one or more inside a hollow cypress tree or stump in a fertile lake or stream. Warmouths love dimly lit hollows, and if the hole is big enough to drop a jig, cricket or worm in, you'll soon be yanking warmouths out one after another.

Mini-crankbaits also are good warmouth catchers. Use 1/12- to 1/8-ounce minnow or crayfish imitations fished on an ultralight spinning or spincast combo. Cast around cypress knees, weedbed edges, stumps or other good warmouth cover, and get ready for exciting battles with these spunky, big-mouthed fish.

Green Sunfish
No panfish is more abundant and adaptable than the green sunfish, a prolific colonizer tolerant of warm, turbid water. No creek is too small for it, no river too large. Turn its stream into a lake or pond and it will stick around and do just fine. In fact, if a body of water is even remotely capable of supporting fish life, the green sunfish probably is there.

Some folks know them as black perch, shade perch, ricefield slicks or rubbertails. The back and sides are olive to bluish green, while the undersides are a beautiful yellow-orange. The short black gill flaps have white or yellow-orange margins, and the cheeks are streaked with distinctive blue squiggles. The fin tips appear dipped in yellow paint.

Green sunfish always seem hungry or looking for a fight. They're not exactly an angling challenge. In fact, the simile "shooting fish in a barrel" might have been coined to describe fishing for them. On ultralight tackle, however, these little devils make quite a showing. They have big mouths and will take everything from garden hackle to small bass plugs.

Look for "greenies" in quiet pools of streams and along lake and pond shores. Cast near a root wad, weedbed, brushpile, boulders, riprap or other cover, and if the species inhabits the water you're fishing, you'll probably catch one.

Spotted Sunfish
Though little known, the spotted sunfish occurs throughout the Southeast. It rarely weighs even half a pound, but its scrappiness, pretty colors and sweet-tasting meat make this sprite a favorite with panfishermen.

No butterfly is more splendidly colored than the spawning males of this species. Carmine and tangerine spots on the belly and sides glisten like jewels embedded in dark matrix. The rear margins of the dark fins are aflame with orange. Along the back, against a dark greenish or bluish background, are sparse iridescent ribbons of crimson and blue.

I often have watched spotted sunfish flip from the water and smack against stumps and cypress knees to dislodge insect nymphs. This habit earned them the nickname "stumpknocker." Other nicknames include spotted bream, scarlet sunfish, red perch and chinquapin.

These fish reach their greatest abundance in bottomland waters, but are not specialists. Spotted sunfish inhabit many types of waters, including oxbows, delta rivers, bayous, tidal rivers, gravel-bottomed creeks and backwaters of clear mountain streams. They also adapt well to life in man-made impoundments.

I've caught spotted sunfish on worms, crickets, small spinners and popping bugs, usually in calm or moderately flowing water near woody or rocky cover. They often hide around cypress knees and stumps in oxbows, and around boulders, fallen trees and small eddies in streams.

From these spots, they attack insects, small crayfish and other food. In the tidal streams of Florida, which is one of the best stumpknocker states, spotted sunfish hold in deep holes beneath undercut banks waiting to attack small crabs, shrimp and other invertebrates.

Unfortunately, it's rare to catch more than two or three individuals from a single patch of cover. That's one reason this sunfish is so little known. But despite its relative obscurity and small size, the pugnacious spotted sunfish is a real treat for any fun-seeking angler.

Of course, the same holds true for all the sunfish we've discussed. If you're looking for a way to relax, to get away from it all, to capture the fun and excitement of no-frills fishing, try your luck on some of these beautiful little fish and rediscover the joys of "catch-what-bites" panfishing.