Capt’n Tom’s Yellow Perch Story

One day, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in March, when I was about 10 or 12, my dad took me fishing during the peak of the yellow perch spawning run. My mom and my sister were fishing too. I can still picture in my mind, my dad and I, standing together stream side, knee deep in mud, from dawn to dusk, catching two yellow perch at a time, as fast as we could take fish off and flip back out.

We caught EXACTLY 1,000 yellow perch. My dad caught most of them. When we got home we spread them out on the front porch and counted our catch. It was EXACTLY 1,000!!!

We then invited all the neighbors over for all the perch they could carry.

I remember my dad telling me that if it wasn’t for catfish and muskrat, his family never would have made it through the Great Depression. We had never heard of catch and release back then.

My fondest memories of my dad are when we were fishing together.

Those were the good old days and when I learned to love fishing.

I think for those of us who are older… that fishing… is all about… being a child again… those memories of great fishing trips keep coming back and are stored in a very special place in my mind…

I told the “1,000 Perch Day Story” at work one day and the foreman started calling me “PERCH”. Then everybody at work and all of my friends started calling me PERCH. Someone still calls me PERCH once in awhile and I think of that fantastic day over fifty years ago.

Check out my other fish stories:

THE 5 1/4 POUND BASS STORY

FISHING AND POT DON’T MIX HA HA

THE CHANNEL CATFISH STORY

THE MISSING DOLLAR STORY

EMAIL ME YOUR FISH STORIES… and I might post them on my FISH TALES section here on my website.