Maryland angler Thomas Dembeck Jr. and his fishing partner of 50 years, Lee Haile, are old hands at catching limits of big yellow perch. They chiefly drift fish in Haile’s 20-foot aluminum boat in the lower tidewater reaches of the Susquehanna River near Chesapeake Bay.
About mid-day on Feb. 7, the two were fishing in 50 feet of water and hauling in lots of small perch. They were using double jig rigs, and it’s common for them to catch two fish at a time on those setups. So, when Dembeck felt some solid weight as he reeled in a fish, he figured it was two undersized perch on the line.
“I was so relaxed about pulling up another couple small perch that when I noticed a bald eagle flying overhead I was turned up to look at it – not really paying attention to the fish I was reeling in,” Dembeck tells Outdoor Life. “But when the eagle passed, and I got back to fishing, I looked down and saw a giant yellow perch.
“‘Oh my,’ I said, ‘it’s as big as a yellow submarine.’”
That shocked both anglers into action, and Haile reached for their landing net. But as he turned to get it, he knocked into the water.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Dembeck, a semi-retired 68-year-old landscape contractor from Hydes. “But the net floated, and Lee was able to reach out and grab it. Then he netted my perch that was at the water surface.”
Haile, who holds the Maryland tidewater record for an 8-pound pickerel, realized Dembeck’s huge perch could be a state record. It was the biggest perch Dembeck had ever caught, and he’s caught thousands. So, he put it in the live well, and the anglers kept on catching perch until they had a limit of 10 fish each. Then they headed home and weighed Dembeck’s fish on a kitchen scale. They checked the Maryland state yellow perch records for tidewater fish and realized it could be a state record.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources maintains fishing records in different categories. State-record fish caught in Chesapeake Bay are listed in the Chesapeake or “tidal” division, while records caught in freshwater are listen in the nontidal division. The state-record yellow perch in the nontidal division is a 3.3 pounder caught from a parm pond in 2006.
After calling the DNR and filling out a record application online, the two anglers took the fish to Gibby’s Seafood in Lutherville, where it officially weighed 2.3 pounds and measured 16 inches long. The next day the fish was inspected and verified by DNR recreational fisheries coordinator Erik Zlokovitz and certified as a new state record for Maryland’s tidal division.
Dembeck’s perch topped the previous tidal record, a 2.2-pound yellow perch, that had been on the books since 1979.
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Dembeck says the deep-water winter perch fishery in the lower Susquehanna River is outstanding. He and Haile regularly catch hundreds of perch in a day of fishing. They release 10 fish for every one they keep, he says, only saving fish 11-inches or bigger to fill their 10 fish daily limits.
“We use a one-ounce sinker to take down a double rig of 1/8-ounce paddle tail ‘Panfish Assassin’ grubs,” said Dembeck. “I like an olive color grub with a bright chartreuse tail – but only in paddle tail style, not twisty tails.”
He uses 10-pound test braided line on a spinning outfit, with a 14-pound test fluorocarbon leader. Bites from perch are very subtle, and difficult to feel in untrained hands. The water temperature is currently in the 30s, and while the fish fight sluggishly, Dembeck says they are gorging on a wide assortment of baitfish.
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“When you bring them up, they always disgorge small minnows – always,” he says. “I’m sure my record fish spit up some baits when it was in the live well, and it may have weighed even more. But it is, what it is, and I still have a state record.”
He’s having a mount made of his record yellow perch, and says he’ll be chasing the fish with his old friend Haile for as long as they stick around. “I think they’ll be in the lower Susquehanna until early March, and we’ll be after them as much as we can.”
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