What exactly is the perch egg ribbon?
One of the strangest structures in freshwater: the female extrudes her entire annual egg production as a single gelatinous, accordion-folded strand, up to 2 m (7 ft) long, while a procession of smaller males trails her and fertilizes it as it emerges. The ribbon gets draped over weeds or wood and left. The jelly matrix is the whole defense: swollen with water, unpalatable to most predators, and flexible enough to sway with waves instead of tearing, it shields the eggs for the one to three weeks (temperature depending) they take to hatch. If you see pale, folded ribbons on early-season weed edges, you are looking at the next year class.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Spawning
Same topic, other species
- Why do male crappie turn almost black in spring? — Crappie
- Do largemouth and smallmouth hybridize in the wild? — Largemouth Bass
- Do muskie guard their eggs or fry? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Do pike guard their eggs or young? — Northern Pike
- What water temperature do smallmouth spawn at? — Smallmouth Bass
- When and where does each trout species spawn? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Do walleye guard a nest like bass do? — Walleye