What is simply too big for a perch — frogs, mice, suckers, ciscoes?
All four, as adults of their kind. A perch feeds through a small mouth and a smaller throat with a short-range peck, so its fish prey tops out at small minnows, young-of-year fish and, for true jumbos, a goby or a small perch. A frog or a mouse is far outside that plumbing — at most a tadpole gets eaten — and the surface is not where a bottom-grazing daytime feeder looks for food anyway. Suckers and ciscoes matter only at their smallest: newly hatched fry are fair game for any perch, and jumbos do take young smelt where the two share a lake, but a grown sucker or cisco is a bigger fish than the perch itself. If a bait looks like a bass lure, it is not a perch bait.
The full story
This answer is one piece of a longer lesson — setups, diagrams and the reasoning behind it.
More questions about Diet
- What do yellow perch actually eat?
- Do perch really eat each other?
- Why do tiny baits out-fish big ones so consistently?
- How does a shiner or shad forage base change the game?
- Do perch feed at night at all?
- What do the big jumbos eat that the small fish do not?
- Why is a piece of worm such a reliable perch bait — do perch eat worms and leeches naturally?
Same topic, other species
- Do crappie eat freshwater shrimp and scuds? — Crappie
- Do adult largemouth bother with leeches, worms, freshwater shrimp or fish eggs? — Largemouth Bass
- Do adult muskie ever eat small stuff — crayfish, gobies, insects, leeches? — Muskellunge (Muskie)
- Do pike eat shad and alewives? — Northern Pike
- Do smallmouth really eat leeches and hellgrammites? — Smallmouth Bass
- How does a trout's diet change as it grows? — Trout (Rainbow · Brook · Lake)
- Will walleye eat a dead minnow — and do they eat fish eggs or scuds? — Walleye