Big Spirit last weekend

Fished Big Spirit for walleyes over abor Day weekend. I was trolling the basin with a little more to the east toward Big Stoney. Using leadcore. Switched between #5 shad rap bluegill and Hornets in the #5 perch and silver and blue. It was pretty productive with fish caught in 16 inch to 20 inch range. Did not count the numbers over the 3 day. The perch were a nuisance. The horde of boats off Big Stoney were probably 300 to yards to my east. I finally started to throw some of the larger fish in the livewell and ended up with 20 one day and 15 the next. I went to larger #7 Shad rap and that kept some of them off but still caught a baot load. I talked to a fishing friend Sunday and he told me the DNR has concern with the high numbers of perch in Big Spirit and the lack of forage to sustain them. Not sure if this is true or not but he is usually giving out good info. I found pods of stacked perch on the depth finder and you would run through them and it was fish on. I ended up mving into the 17 ft range south of Big Stoney and marked a number of bigger fish. Did not have time to explore this with the leadcore. There is a tournament next weekend. I have no suggestions except you will be dealing with a perch bite plus the walleyes.

there has been a huge surge in perch population the past two years, the problem is sorting through the small ones to keep one, were there any perch 10-12 inches yet?

I set my minimum at 10 inches and that is what I kept. I did not have any bigger but had many at 8 inches.It was kind of weird as I have fished perch alot and usually slow drift with a 1/16 ounce tube and some meat as they move around. Had not caught this many fish pulling cranks. It obviously was not real sporting on lead-core but it did make for a nice pile of fillets. I controlled difted through the crowd of boats with a tube jig and small minnow and picked up a few 8 inch fish. Looking around I did not that much action. once I got off more toward the basin is when I really picked up clouds of schools. I think most boats were fishing to close in. There were 2 boats anchored off where I was at and they were real busy reeling them in.