Macquarie Perch

Perch is a freshwater gamefish. The most common is the European Perch, or “Red Fin”. They are a medium sized fish which tend to school. So, when you find one Red Fin, if you keep fishing in the same spot, you will tend to find the rest of the school, and you can be on the bite for hours.

In Australia, we have plenty of introduced European Perch, but we also have some of our own beautiful native perch. The Golden Perch, or “Yellow Belly” is the more common. They tend to be much deeper-bodied and have a greater average size than the Red Fin here. I have found them to be quite aggressive on a lure, and to take a fairly large cod lure when trolling. They don’t tend to school as prolifically are Red Fin, but they are a far better fight when you do hook them.

The other beautiful perch that we have, which is far more rare and listed as an endangered species is the Macquaries Perch, or “Macca”. They tend to be smaller than Yellow Belly, and generally more the size of a Red Fin.

I’ve known the adults to feed at night, and they also seem to school, because if you catch one, you’re likely to catch another.

One place where they seem to be recovering in numbers if Lake Dartmouth. I always catch one when I’m there, and they are very special. Once, I landed on a school of baby Maccas, and I was pulling little ones up for hours, and then releasing them carefully. It’s great to know there’s so many babies on their way to adults, and to regenerate their numbers.