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HABITS OF YELLOW PERCH IN WISCONSIN LAKES. 
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By A. S. PEARSE AND HENRIETTA ACHTENBERG. 
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INTRODUCTION. 
The yellow perch, Perca. flavescens (Mitchill), is widely distributed throughout 
the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. ‘‘It is essentially a lake 
fish, but occurs also in running streams, most abundantly in the larger rivers and least so in 
creeks. * * * ‘As a game fish the yellow perch can be commended chiefly on account 
of the fact that anybody can catch it. It can be taken with hook and line any month 
in the year and with any sort of bait—grasshoppers, angleworms, grubs, small minnows, 
Fic. 1.—The yellow perch, Perca flavescens (Mitchill). 
pieces of mussel, or pieces of fish; and it will even rise, and freely, too, on occasion, to 
the artificial fly.’ * * * It is easily taken through the ice in winter.”* System- 
atically the perch is related to the pikes and the darters and, like them, is largely 
carnivorous in its feeding habits. It belongs to a family of “highly organized, shapely, 
powerful, and active fishes, thoroughly equipped for a predatory life, and filling an 
important place in the ecological system of our inland waters.’’* 
Wisconsin lakes in many localities furnish admirable habitats for perch, and those 
near Madison afford unusual opportunities for scientific study. The Wisconsin Geo- 
logical and Natural History Survey has collected very complete data on the contour 
of the lake bottoms, the annual cycle of temperature changes, lake respiration, plankton, 
@ Forbes and Richardson, 1908, DP. 277. 
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