White perch are simply everywhere in Chesapeake Bay. Get ’em while you can.

What white perch lack in drag-burning antics they more than make up in reliability, availability and taste. I’ll take that trade off any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. (I have no clue what that saying means or where I stumbled upon it, but it’s one of my go-tos.)

That’s no surprise since these cousins to the famous striper weigh in at less than a pound with few physical tools to peel line of your spool. But white perch are ubiquitous and literally can be found just about anywhere you’d think fish like to hang out — around pier and bridge pilings, over oyster bars and other structures.

Talk about your versatile eaters. Rare is the day when they’re not hungry.

And while they prefer bait like fresh grass shrimp and spirited minnows, you can catch them on a variety of lures and even flies. If I was limited to just three classes of lures to catch white perch, the top three would be a spinnerbait, followed by a spinnerbait and then a spinnerbait.

I joke, of course, but that’s pretty darn close. An assortment of mini-soft plastic shad imitations work great too.

This spring, my favorite new perchin’ rig is a 5-foot, ultra-light outfit from St. Croix’s Panfish Series. It’s a sweetheart of a rod — sensitive enough to feel those subtle takes yet strong enough to land fish with confidence if they head for a brush pile.

I match it with a PENN Battle III 1000 reel loaded with 6-pound braid. These super lines are uber-sensitive, resist nicks from stumps and logs and are so thin the fish don’t see it.

There’s not a lot of time left with this spring’s white perch run, so head on out if you haven’t already. With so many productive perch fishing holes in our area, the only question left to answer is what’s the best way to find a spot on the creek bank?

Striper roadmap deadline approaching

Last Monday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources held its online forum to get feedback on its plan to rebuild the striper fishery.

Called Public Information Document on Amendment 7 for stripers, there are about 10 questions on the document. The comment period for this first phase of a very involved process ends April 9.

By my count, nearly 90 participants listened in, with most who spoke up making passionate yet reasonable cases to our fishery managers to take bold, conservation-minded action to reverse the decline of the rockfish population. I was, however, taken aback and more than a little disappointed listening to our fishery leaders articulate their positions on the striper situation.

Divine intervention? We’ll take all the help we can get, but we can’t count on that to reestablish a healthy, sustainable striper fishery.

How about thinking outside the box? For example, at Monday’s meeting our experts did not mention — and if they did, I did not hear it — the possibility that the explosion in numbers of snakeheads and blue catfish in spawning rivers might be impacting recruitment, meaning they’re eating juvenile rockfish.

Although I’m not saying the stock is destined to crash, all kinds of alarms have already gone off, not dissimilar to what happened in the early 1980s. Back then, there were those who even up until the very end acted like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, shouting hoarsely, “All is well!” as chaos erupted all around.

It gives me no pleasure to say this, frankly, but it has to be said: Many who care about and/or make our livelihood from a healthy Chesapeake Bay fishery feel our words have fallen on deaf ears at DNR. Over the past few years, if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it 100 times, from anglers, guides and charter captains, and small business owners, that our natural agency’s hierarchy seems tonedeaf to our opinions and is shortsighted in its approach to meeting the needs of the recreational fishing community.

Case in point, banning catch-and-release in April to help reduce dead discards, a term given to those rockfish that do not survive release. July in the upper Chesapeake can be a particularly nasty month. Yes, this is a problem, yet it is just one of several factors that has caused the decline of this iconic gamefish.

For some inexplicable reason DNR leaders seem insistent in pushing the narrative that all catch-and-release is bad and therefore have banned the cold-water, low-salinity catch-and-release during April on the Susquehanna Flats, which has hamstrung many fishing related businesses. Moreover, DNR’s own science says otherwise.

If banning catch-and-release during closed seasons would actually save rockfish, almost everyone I know would be all in. Yesterday, I spoke with one of the best charter skippers on the Bay, a man who runs 250-plus trips a year. He can catch rockfish in a parking lot.

When asked what it’s going to take to revive the striper fishery, he said without emotion, “Less days on the water … And everyone is going to have to take a hit.”

Outdoors calendar

April 9: Deadline for comments for ASMFC’s Public Information Document on striped bass. Email your to comments@ asmfc.org, with “Striped Bass PID” in the subject line.

April 17-18: Junior turkey hunting days, ages 16 or younger only.

April 19-May 24: Maryland spring turkey season. Includes Sundays in certain counties, see DNR online chart.

May 1-15: Spring striper season. One fish per person per day, min. size 35 inches. Chesapeake Bay from Brewerton Channel to the MD-VA Line, excluding all bays, sounds, tributaries, creeks and rivers, except Tangier Sound and Pocomoke Sound.