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SUBJECT: # 3437: White Perch for sale!
Submitted by Mike A formerly from LA from VIRGINIA on 5/1/02 12:19:00 AM
In Georgia they're call Crappies, in Louisiana, they're called White Perch or Crappie, pronounced Croppie. In South Louisiana, they're called sac-a-lait which means "bag of milk" (French or coon-a**). Anyway, my wife came home from the grocery store, (Food Lion), yesterday with a package of fresh fish. The label read White Perch @ $3.29 a pound. I opened the package & it really was White Perch. We ate them & of course they were delicious. They were about the size of large bream weighing 10 to 12 ozs apiece. My question is this: I thought they were game fish & couldn't be sold commercially, because it's against the law to sell game fish including bass & bream. Any answers out there?
MIKE
White Perch Morone americana
Length: Usually 5-7 inches (127-178mm) Weight: Average 8 ounces Coloring: variable, dark grayish-green, dark silvery green, or dark brown to almost black on back; pale olive or silvery green on sides; silvery white on belly Common Names: white perch, narrow-mouthed bass, silver perch, sea perch Found in Lakes: Michigan, Huron, Ontario, Erie and Superior
How to distinguish white bass from white perch
Native to Atlantic coastal regions, white perch invaded the Great Lakes through the Erie and Welland canals in 1950. Prolific competitors of native fish species, white perch are believed to have the potential to cause declines of Great Lakes walleye populations.
White perch have been found to eat the eggs of walleye (Stizostedion vitreum), white bass (Morone chrysops), other white perch and possibly other species as well. Fish eggs apparently are an important component of the diet of white perch in the spring months. At times, depending on which fish is spawning, the eggs of either walleye or white bass comprise 100% of the white perch’s diet. During one three-year study, this diet was unique in that eggs were eaten for a comparatively long time; they were the only significant food item eaten by white perch adults during two of the study’s three years; and large volumes were eaten per individual. White perch also feed heavily on minnows (Notropis spp.). The collapse of the walleye fishery in the Bay of Quinte on the north shore of Lake Ontario coincided with the increase in white perch population and may have been a result of egg predation and the resulting lack of recruitment.
Another concern is that white perch, actually a species of the bass genus (Moronidae), have hybridized with native white bass in western Lake Erie. These hybrids were first noted in western Lake Erie in the early 1980s, the same time when white perch were increasing in abundance in this area. Since these hybrids are capable of back-crossing with parent species as well as crossing among themselves, they could dilute the gene pool of both parent species. This is the first known natural occurring hybrid in this genus; all other Morone hybrids were artificially produced. This hybridization is probably also occurring in the other Great Lakes.
White perch were first found in the Great Lakes basin in Cross Lake in central New York in 1950. They apparently gained access to the lake via the Erie Barge Canal during the warm weather in the 1930s and 1950s. From the canal system, the species moved down the Oswego River to Lake Ontario. Once in Lake Ontario, they had moved into Lake Erie via the Welland Canal by 1953 and continued to spread to the upper Great Lakes. The first reports of its westward movement through the Great Lakes are as follows: Lake St. Clair, 1977; Lake Huron, 1987; Lake Michigan at Green Bay/Fox River in Wisconsin, May 1988; and Illinois waters of Lake Michigan off Chicago, September 1988. One oddity is that the first sighting of white perch in Lake Superior waters was in 1986 at Duluth Harbor--one year before it was found in Lake Huron and two years before it was seen in Lake Michigan. The Lake Superior population is still restricted to this harbor, possibly because it is the warmest part of that frigid lake. That population likely represents a separate introduction since it does not fit the pattern of western dispersal.
Established in all five Great Lakes and their surrounding states, white perch can also be found in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska and New Hampshire. White perch have been stocked intentionally in other areas for sport fishing. Their native range is the Atlantic Slope drainages from St. Lawrence-Lake Ontario drainage in Quebec south to the Peedee River of South Carolina. A marine species, they run up coastal streams to spawn.
An excellent panfish highly regarded as a food fish in the Eastern United States, it is not often exploited as a game fish and generally is regarded as undesirable, especially when over-population in fresh waters causes the species to become stunted.
Sources: Pam Fuller, Southeastern Biological Science Center, National Biological Service. Fishes of Wisconsin by George C. Becker (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). Freshwater Fishes of Canada by W.B. Scott and E.J. Crossman (Fisheries Research Board of Canada, 1973).
White perch are among the most important recreational and commercial fishes in Chesapeake Bay, especially in Maryland waters, where more than 80% of the bay landings occur. Commercial landings of white perch in the bay peaked in 1969 at about 2.8 million pounds and have generally declined since. Commercial landings are made with a variety of gear types, especially haul seines, fyke nets, pound nets, and gill nets. Catches are greatest during the spring spawning season (when the fish move from coastal salt water into the fresh water streams)and also from September through November, when the perch school to feed on migratory clupeids.
The recreational fishery for white perch is significant, especially in Maryland, and in recent years recreational catches in the bay have exceeded commercial catches. The recreational fishery is concentrated in the spring and autumn when white perch are taken by drifting live bait or by trolling artificial lures near the surface. The Chesapeake Bay sport catch record is a fish taken in Maryland waters that weighed 2.6 pounds. (There are no size or creel limits for this fish).
Hope this helps Mike A.
Gridleak
of which fish we are talking about here, that being the crappie (aka white perch) or the Marine (salt) fish known as the white perch, is by a close examination of the fillet.
The Marine white perch fillet will have a pronounced hump to the back. Otherwise these two fish are remarkably similar.
Gridleak
Excellent point, and well made I might add. (lol) ; )
Gridleak
I'm pretty sure Mike knows a fresh-water crappie when he sees it. To try to answer his question, speckled perch used to be sold in Florida if they were caught in certain places and tagged. Dunno about GA. You can't sell bass or bream though.
Also what Terry said, they could be farm-raised.
The other possibility is that they could be illegal. Folks up there in NC started seeing Pompano showing up in Publix with "necklaces" indicating that they had been caught in a gill net. Commercial pomps from Fla usually come from hook and line guys since the net ban. Some folks up there blew the whistle on them and they had to quit buying them.
What did you fry them in Mike?
Yes, I do trust that Mike A,(wherever he may from or going to) knows a white perch when he sees one. Just stop all this other BS about a Marine white perch.
My home state, The Great State of Texas, allows most legal fish to be sold in our state with qualifications attached of course.
IM
ps: I too recently caught a freezer full of giant crappies just a couple weeks ago off Lake Conroe. and I'm tellin' ya some of the ones that were over sixteen inches long (nearly 3 lbs) had a hump in front of there dorsal fins.
you convinced me.
Gridleak
Are we talking Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, or Texas here.
Sorry LT but I don't think Texas is gonna care what gets sold in, well, wherever it is mike a's from today. ; )
Gridleak
your original message read, "The label read White Perch", I thought maybe there might be some confusion as to "which" white perch we might actually be looking at. Afterall as I said, the two fish are remarkably similar and I felt the information might shed some light on how a "white perch" could be sold legally at the market.
Gridleak
K&K
You're breakin' my heart spooled.
Can you get any stewpidider with your posts?
As for the logic spooled, if you can't follow it then hey, you've got more problems then I can help you with, and explainin' white perch to you ain't gonna help.
But one things for sure, I'd bet money mike a was lookin' at marine white perch and not fresh water white perch (aka crappies). I'd also bet money he was lookin' at fillets and had no idea that a salt water variety existed. Furthermore I'd bet he had no idea that the salt water variety can and does live in fresh water and has no protection as a "game" fish. Additionally the two specie (salt and fresh) are so much alike that various specie within the genra are even as we speak interbreading and have created hibrids that will as time goes by, further gray the line between the two.
As for what's all that got to do with a bass fishing board...
...don't ask me, mike a brought up white perch. I was just tryin' to be nice and not say something as brain dead as "this is a bass fishing board which means fresh water, not saltH2o". Which now that you mention it spooled, bass are a member of the perch family which includes salt water perch. Hey, there you go, that's what it's got to do with a bass fishing board. Well I'll be. Start out with a acorn and end up with a freight train.
WOOOOO, WOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!
Gridleak
Sez you. Prove you weren't confused.
At least when I woke up this morning I wasn't wishin' I was somewhere else. I knew where I was, and was where I was s'posed to be.
I didn't wake up wishin' I was in "LA", thinkin' I was in Virginia, relize where I was and have to come back and say "From Georgia, not Virginia". You're tryin to tell us you're not confused?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Only one I know who's even more confused about where he is when he wakes up is spooled. Heck most the time he don't even know WHO he is today much less where he is.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Grid...BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!...leak HEH ha ha ha!
Then again, it could have been soy or tofu.
The only thing worse that UNC's football team is NCSU's basketball team.
Just kidding, any kind of fishing is better than working.
Mike a prob'ly does know a crappie when he sees one. That is of course assuming it has the skin on it, which he didn't mention in his original post. I have to tell you though, I'm danged if I'd pay $3.29/pound for fish that wasn't even skint.
The fact of the matter is, I didn't post the above info for any reason except to offer some explaination of how a fish labeled a "white perch" could be legally sold. It was an effort to provide a valid answer to a valid question. So I apologize mike a for being civil and tryin' to help, it won't happen again. Not for you anyway.
Next time I'll just post something asinine befitting yours and spooleds "primo" comments. You know, something like, "Well duh! Where did it say on the package they were being sold legally? Did you call the fish and game folks, and keep some for evidence or did you just eat them all?"
Well shoot. Now that I look at that last "primo" comment, I realize that it's actually quite lucid. Try as I might I just can't seem to sink to the asininity of yours and spooleds comments.
Oh well, there's always a brite side to everything ; )
Gridleak
Gus
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