Perch

Perch, any of approximately 150 species of bony fishes characterized by two dorsal fins that are separate or narrowly joined. The front dorsal fin is spined and the rear fin is soft-rayed. One or two spines also occur on the anal fin.

The common perch is found throughout Europe and northern Asia. Greenish, with dark vertical bars on its sides and reddish-orange coloring on its lower fins, it weighs as much as 2.7 kg (6 lb). The somewhat smaller yellow perch, a native of North America east of the Rocky Mountains, has a golden body color, orange ventral and anal fins, and dark vertical bars on its sides. Both species are popular food fishes.

Perch often move in shoals, hunting along the shores and bottoms of shallow lakes and ponds and eating fish eggs and larvae and small fishes. They spawn in the spring, when the females deposit long strings of eggs in shallow water. There are three subfamilies of perch. The first includes the common and yellow perch; the second includes the walleye, the sauger, and the pike perch; and the third and largest subfamily is made up of the darters, which seldom grow to more than 10 cm (more than 4 in) long.

Scientific classification: Perch belong to the order Perciformes. The common perch is classified as Perca fluviatilis and the yellow perch as Perca flavescens.