Yellow Perch

The locations Piney Run: Bass anglers are succeeding in the shallow or deep edges of the hydrilla beds with topwater lures, or plastic worms or lizards. The average catch is running 1.5 pounds to 3 pounds. Catfish are running 3-pounds to 7 pounds and are taking chicken liver, cutbait, and worms. Nine to 12-inch yellow perch and slab bluegills are being caught in 18-feet to 25 feet of water. Use redworms or waxworms while trolling or slow drifting over them. Prettyboy Reservoir: Anglers are fishing pigs and jigs for small and largemouth bass, which are plentiful in the 20 to 25-foot zone.

GREENSBORO -- Here in its headwaters, the Choptank River is a place you'd want to come to in spring, even if it had no fish at all, let alone the ones we're hoping for today. Most Marylanders know the Choptank for its broad, lower reaches, flowing to the horizons beneath U.S. 50 at Cambridge, a scale fit for reflecting sunrises, sunsets and full moons. But a few dozen miles upstream, the river narrows, and its translucent, dark-stained waters are canopied by forest. Dogwood and viburnum splash its meanders with white.

Under a hazy half-moon, they began streaming through the gates of Piney Run Park at 4 a.m. yesterday. Within an hour, the launch area of the park's lake was dotted with the bobbing lights of boats. Anglers readied to cast their lines in search of a fish worth $10,000. More than 475 fishermen converged on the park in southeast Carroll County for the 18th annual Early Bird Fishing Tournament, the season's first event. Some were lured by the quiet recesses of the tree-rimmed lake, surrounded by horse pastures and rolling fields.

Bashing goes too far There goes Sun columnist Ken Rosenthal, bashing another bastion of Maryland sports. In the past, he has trashed the Orioles and their owner, the Ravens, and Cal Ripken, and recently he had the audacity to suggest that Keyshawn Johnson, of all people, should be allowed to wear No. 19 in Baltimore. This statement alone proves that Mr. Rosenthal just doesn't get Baltimore. In a recent column, he didn't blast just the Terps, he took on the whole Atlantic Coast Conference, an entity that is most respected by all Terps fans.

George Krantz can remember a time in the 1960s when anglers stood shoulder to shoulder along the South River in Anne Arundel County, filling washtubs with yellow perch that had returned to spawn. "For most people, this was the first fish you caught as a kid," said Krantz, the state fisheries director in the mid-1980s. "Now it's almost nonexistent on the Western Shore and struggling to hold on on the Eastern Shore. All of the sites in Baltimore County used to be loaded. Today, there's nothing."

Maryland's two-year drought continues to create inhospitable conditions for fish in the Baltimore area, and state officials said yesterday kills of baitfish and yellow perch have spread to four more tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay this week.Charles Poukish, environmental specialist for the Maryland Department of the Environment, said fish kills in the Middle River, as well as in Frog Mortar, Galloway and Dundee creeks, were first reported Tuesday.While the kills so far have been limited to large numbers of silversides, mummichogs, young menhaden and yellow perch, pickerel, catfish and sunfish also have been affected.

A federal judge in Baltimore has fined two Ohio brothers $20,000 for buying 1,400 pounds of yellow perch that were illegally caught in Maryland waters, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office announced yesterday.U.S. District Judge Andre M. Davis also sentenced Anthony DeMore, 59, to three months' home detention and two years' probation and Terry DeMore, 56, to two years' probation. Both men live in Sandusky, Ohio, where they operated the now-defunct DeMore's Lake Fish Co.The brothers forfeited to the government the 1988 Ford truck they used to transport the fish from Maryland to Ohio, and the $2,444.

John R. Griffin, secretary of the Department of Natural Resources, has named Forest, Wildlife and Heritage Service director Eric Schwaab to replace Dr. Robert Bachman as head of the state Fisheries Service.Bachman, 65, is retiring after 13 years with DNR.Schwaab, who has held a number of positions with DNR over 16 years, transferred to fisheries effective last Wednesday.Schwaab, 38, began his career with DNR in 1983 as a Natural Resources Police officer, managed Deep Creek Lake State Park, served in waterfront and resource management positions with the State Forest and Park Service and was director of the Forest Service.

Last Thursday afternoon, fisheries biologist Paul Piavis was removing ear bones from yellow perch caught earlier in the week in the Patuxent River, where once there was a thriving fishery for yellow perch and where one might be built in the future.By removing and sectioning the ear bones and counting the calcified rings, much as one might count the rings on a tree stump, Piavis said biologists can get a read on age and growth rates.But, he said, ear bones reveal only a part of the mysteries surrounding yellow perch, a species that inhabits the upper reaches of tidal rivers and creeks.