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Sprawling Lake St. Clair is a hotspot for spring panfishing in southeast Michigan. So, Dr. Steve Smith and his friend and guide Jeremy Ullmann headed there to catch fish for the cooler on April 25. They left a public boat ramp at about 8 a.m. and ran into the lake along the St. Clair River.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were out just fishing for groceries,\u201d Smith tells Outdoor Life<\/em>. \u201cWe wanted good-eating panfish to fry. So, we targeted yellow perch and anything else that hit.\u201d<\/p>\n Ullmann and Smith, a 70-year-old dentist from Adrian, Michigan, fished several spots through the day using ultralight spinning tackle<\/a> and live minnows. They blistered the fish.<\/p>\n \u201cWe caught dozens of jumbo yellow perch, a lot up to 13 inches, plus some walleyes, white bass, smallmouth bass and catfish,\u201d says Smith, a long-time local fisherman with wide-ranging fishing experience \u2014 including 53 world records <\/a>(a mix of all-tackle and line-class records). \u201cWe released the smallmouths and catfish, and later I filleted 93 fish. It was a haul.\u201d<\/p>\n They\u2019d caught so many fish that by 3 p.m. they were about ready to head in. That\u2019s when Smith hooked something so big and strong, he thought it was a smallmouth.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew it was a good one, and when I pulled it up and swung it aboard the boat, I thought it was maybe a white bass, which we\u2019d already caught that day,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut I\u2019ve fished there for decades, and knew it wasn\u2019t the right colors of a white bass. It was much more silver, and I figured it had to be a giant white perch. \u2026 So we tossed it in the live well, and quit fishing for the day.\u201d<\/p>\n The fish died in the live well, however, so the anglers put it on ice. They went fishing for walleyes the next day, but Smith couldn\u2019t stop thinking about how large the white fish was \u2014 even as he was still uncertain about a positive species identification.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a fishery biologist friend look at it a couple days later and he said it was a white bass,\u201d Smith reported. \u201cBut I just knew it was a white perch. So I got a second opinion a few days later [and took] it to a Michigan DNR office.\u201d<\/p>\n There the fish was positively identified as a whopper white perch by Cleyo Harris, a DNR fisheries biologist.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fish was later inspected by a group of state biologists and they all said it was a white perch,\u201d Smith explained. \u201cThey weighed the fish, and certified it as a new state record for the species.\u201d<\/p>\n Read Next: <\/strong>How to Catch Smallmouth Bass<\/p>\n Smith\u2019s record white perch weighed 2.592 pounds and was 13.57 inches long. It tops the previous Michigan white perch record caught in 2015 by Cindy Cordo from Muskegon County\u2019s Bear Lake.<\/p>\n