Perch in deeper Walleye filled waters

[Double-Eh]

I am curious if anyone can help me locate a few schools of perch.

In my experience, it's always been perch in shallower lakes and shallower waters, to the point that you can see them mucking around, contemplating eating your lure or just staring it down.

In bigger lakes, with predatory fish like Walleye and pike, I wonder what would be the best method to try and locate the little buggers. I hear they stick to deeper waters, but I don't know this as fact.

Last year we were fishing for walleye and having a good time about it using smaller lures. When it was time to call it quits I told my brothers to pull their lines up and I started to motor us to shore. We got about 50 yards from the dock when my brother pulls in his line, having let it "troll" for a good 5 minutes, and there is a 1.5 lb perch with the hook through his lip. Had I known instantaneously that this happened, it would have been full stop to explore the possibilities of perch. But we don't know how long he was towing behind us.

The lake varies from 40 feet to 8 feet where we had been. I have never found them again. My brother provided zero for how deep his hook was, how far back, nothing. Just a teeny red devil, capped with the flawless bait known as a sunflower seed. Seasoned.

Where do these guys hang out in these kinds of lakes? The bottom of the deeper parts? The top? Shallower waters at the top of a ridge before the drop?
Thanks in advance.

[jaydub99]

I used to fish the same Ontario lake on many weekends and what I found is: the smaller perch tend to be anywhere shallow. The larger perch tended to school and move fairly predictably. Sometimes when we found them, you could just drift for an hour and stay right on top of them. Other times you'd have to guess which way they were headed and just try to stay a little bit ahead of them. But they usually cruised along a dropoff, staying between 20 and 40 ft. I assumed they were able to hunt smaller fish there but also escape the pike by going shallow?

[Red Bullets]

Alot of the bigger summer perch I have caught are in depths from 4 to 14 feet of water.

If you find the schools of spottail shiners or dacy minnows the bigger perch will be close by.

In lakes on windy days, the big perch will be on the downwind side of the lake.
They will hold in 4 to 8 feet waiting for food to float in. I have seen and caught them holding below 2 foot breaker waves in 6-8 ft. of water. They have always been facing the shore when holding in the waves.

[traxxas13]

In the lake I always go to populated with pike, walleye and perch we go to the far end of the lake about 10 feet from shore in about 2-4 feet of water. We can see and catch lots of perch and even get the odd pike to bite. The perch vary in size from 4-10".

[fluxcore]

Most Perch move shallow when the water warms up, bugs and small minnows moving out of the shallows are the treats, in gull lake I watched kids catching keepers all day off the dock in 4-6ft of water. Great perch action!