Yellow perch are small relatives of the walleye. They are extremely tasty and fairly aggressive. They don't have the crazy teeth that walleye have. They can get up to about 2 pounds, but average size is less than a pound. I've probably caught more of these than any other species. They are fun to catch, especially bigger ones, and they're a good fish to go after with kids because they're easy. I don't know how far south yellow perch get, but if you get them, go after them: they are damned fine eating.
Most of the perch I 've caught have been on either minnows through the ice, or crawlers under a float. These little buggers love minnows. They'll also take leeches. I've also caught quite a few while walleye fishing with a crawler on a floating jig rig. These are schooling fish, so if you catch one, cast back to the same spot for more.
As for hard baits, I've had decent luck with really small (#3) Rapalas, both Originals and Countdowns on my ultralight rod, but probably any small model would work. I tend to use obnoxious colors for the best effect, and just crank them through the schools. For the most part, though, you catch perch to eat, so live bait is the way to go. See Ethics for reasons to not use live bait for fish you intend to release.
These fish live in roaming schools, in (usually) pretty deep water in lakes. You can catch perch at a place for days, then they leave suddenly. It's happened to us on a couple of occasions. When there's a school nearby, it's tough to keep them off; Eric and I have fished perch where we each had two rods, and we were each reeling one in as our other float was going down. It's really fun.
However, they can be a pain, because you catch so many that you spend hours cleaning them. But they're an excellent eating fish, like little walleye, good to broil, grill, pan-fry, or bread and deepfry.
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