Perch dinners still a good catch; Prices stable for now but could rise in coming years

Spiel · March 21, 2008

Perch dinners still a good catch; Prices stable for now but could rise in coming years

March 20, 2008

The price of a perch dinner in Port Dover won't likely go up this summer, even though fishermen have been told the number of fish they can take from Lake Erie is being cut.

"It might put a little bit of price pressure on our menu," Peter Knechtel of The Beach House Restaurant in Port Dover said Wednesday, before adding his suppliers have told him they're expecting to be in good shape this fishing season.

"We don't anticipate any problems."

Andrew Schneider at the Erie Beach Hotel agreed the price of a perch dinner - now $14.99 for an eight-ounce plate or $28.99 for a 16-ounce platter - would likely be affected if the fish weren't readily available.

"Every time the numbers go down, the price goes up," he said.

Lake Erie fishery managers from Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ontario met in Niagara Falls. On Wednesday, they recommended the 2008 total allowable catch for walleye and yellow perch.

In 2007, 5.36-million walleye were permitted to be taken from the lake, but the committee reported the actual walleye harvest was 4.5-million fish. This year, 3.6-million fish will be allowed to be harvested.

For yellow perch, last year 11.4-million pounds could be harvested. This year, that drops to 10.2-million pounds, with Ontario's share being 4.9-million pounds. The actual harvest for 2007 was 9.7-million pounds.

John Cooper of the Lake Erie management unit of the Ministry of Natural Resources said the committee recommended the reductions because both walleye and yellow perch have seen poor spawning every year except one since 2002.

Cooper said these most recent recommendations have been confusing for some sport and commercial fishers because fishing lately has been good.

"They see in their nets that it's some of the best fishing they've seen in years," he said.

But he said the great fishing right now is because there was excellent spawning in the spring of 2003. Now, those perch and walleye are five years old and are the "prime" size. But that was just one good year out of six.

"Other than what happened in 2003, we haven't had good spawning for the past five years."

Cooper said there are a number of factors that contribute to a poor spawning season, including environmental conditions. The ideal conditions would be a cold winter followed by a gradual warm-up and lots of spring runoff. He said they won't know how successful this spring will be for perch and walleye until they do a survey in August.