New PA State Record Yellow Perch
Congrats Jeff!! Nice job!
Willy The Wall Hanger right there! Right next to joebakers bass..
http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100430/NEWS02/304299858 
Published: April 30. 2010 1:15AM
Erie man catches state-record perch By MIKE BLEECH
Contributing writer
First came the wind. Then the rain. And then, the biggest yellow perch Pennsylvania ever has seen.
Advertisement
Jeff Matts braved the elements on Presque Isle Bay the morning of March 25, and the Erie resident's reward was a 2-pound-11-ounce perch that on Wednesday was verified by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission as the record catch in the state.
Fish and Boat Commission officials have spent the past month verifying documentation about the 153/8-inch fish and how it was caught. They agreed it should succeed the 2-pound-9-ounce fish caught from Beltzville Lake in 2000 by Keith Meck of Macungie, as the state record.
Matts, 33, who works at Lord Corp. in Saegertown, and fishing partner Rob Lieder, of Erie, launched their boat at first light March 25 into an estimated wind speed of 10 to 15 mph. After a slow start, rain started falling around 11 a.m. as they anchored on the city side of the bay, between the second and third vistas at Presque Isle State Park.
Matts asked Lieder if he wanted to get out of the rain. Lieder replied that as long as they were there, they might as well fish.
"About a half-hour after it started to rain is when the perch turned on," Matts said. "That was the first fish that I caught, of the 30 fish that I kept that day."
Matts offered a red glow Gem-n-Eye jig, tipped with a minnow and placed under a slip bobber, at a depth of about 10 feet, a foot off the bay bottom.
"On my first cast, as soon as I cast out, I looked down and I was going to bait my second rod, and I looked up and my bobber was gone," Matts said. "I picked it up, I set the hook, and I was reeling the fish in. I thought I had a largemouth bass on, and (Lieder) thought I had a bass on because the week before we were out there and were catching northern pike and largemouth bass and steelhead."
Matts slipped his net under the perch and brought it into the boat. He dropped it in a water-filled bucket to keep it alive, and added two more 2-pound-plus perch over the course of the day.
When Matts got home and measured his perch, he decided to have it weighed at Poor Richard's Bait & Tackle, 6821 West Lake Road. That's when it became evident it might be a record-class fish.
The next morning, Fish and Boat Commission biologist Chuck Murray suggested that Matts weigh the perch on official scales at the commission's Walnut Creek Access Area. It came in at 2 pounds 10.6 ounces.
Carl Richardson, the coordinator of the Fish and Boat Commission's Angler Award and state records programs, told Matts to round up to 11 ounces. That made Matts' perch eligible for record consideration -- a fish must outweigh the standing record by 2 ounces in order for the process to start.
"From that point until now was waiting for them to verify it," Matts said.
It's not near the all-tackle world record -- a 4-pound-3-ounce perch caught in Bordentown, N.J., in 1865 by Charles Abbott -- but it dwarfs the 8-inch-half-pound perch that are common fare in the bay.
MIKE BLEECH can be reached by e-mail at
mikeb73@verizon.net. Read more of his columns at
www.nwpaoutdoors.com.
post edited by DaFuNK - 2010/05/01 12:02:14