Walleyes have a long, roundish body, a forked tail and sharp canine teeth in their jaws. The dorsal fin is separated into two parts, the front portion with 12 to 16 spines, the rear portion with one or two short spines and the rest, soft rays. The anal fin has one or two spines. Walleyes vary in color, ranging from a bluish gray to olive-brown to golden-yellow, with dark-on-light mottling. Side scales may be flecked with gold. Irregular spots on the sides can join to make a vague barred pattern. The belly is light-colored or white.

Walleye are the biggest member of the perch family, and females are usually bigger than males of the same age. In the premiere walleye lakes like Lake Erie, this species can grow to 36 in, and catches in the 18-24 in. range are common. Walleye in Lake Erie often weigh 10 lbs, with the rare fish reaching 15 lb. The record walleye for Pennsylvania is over 17 pounds.

Since walleyes have excellent visual acuity under low illumination levels, they tend to feed more extensively at dawn and dusk, on cloudy or overcast days and under choppy conditions when light penetration into the water column is disrupted. Although anglers interpret this as light avoidance, it is merely an expression of the walleye's competitive advantage over its prey under those conditions.

Similarly, in darkly stained or turbid waters, walleye tend to feed throughout the day. "Walleye chop" is a term used by walleye anglers for rough water typically with winds of 5 to 15 mph, and is one of the indicators for good walleye fishing due to the walleye's increased feeding activity during such conditions. Because walleyes are popular with anglers, fishing for walleyes is regulated by most natural resource agencies. Management may include the use of quotas and length limits to ensure that populations are not over-exploited.

The walleye is often considered to have the best tasting meat of any freshwater fish, and, consequently, is fished recreationally and commercially. Because of its nocturnal feeding habits, it is most easily caught at night using live minnows or lures that mimic small fish. Most commercial fisheries for walleye are situated in the Canadian waters of the Great Lakes, but there are other locations as well.

In springtime walleye will take almost any bait or lure, but may be more challenging to catch through the summer months. Fall often brings another peak of walleye feeding activity. Walleye are readily caught through the ice in winter, usually on jigs, jigging spoons or minnows.

Casting or trolling with spinners or minnow-imitating plugs is a good bet. Special worm harness rigs of spinners and beads are often trolled. Jigs, either traditional bucktails, or tipped with any of the modern plastics, a piece of worm or minnow are walleye angling favorites. Live baits are often still-fished, drifted or trolled on slip-sinker or "bottom-bouncing" rigs. Excellent live bait includes leeches, minnows, earthworms, crayfish and the occasional frog.

When ice fishing walleye are caught jigging or on tip-ups. Tip-ups are generally set up with a dacron backing and a clear synthetic leader. For bait, the most common minnows are Fatheads and shiners.

The smallmouth bass has a moderately compressed, elongated body. There are 3 spines in the anal fin, and 9 to 11 spines in the dorsal fin. The smallmouth bass sports an olive green body above to yellow-white below, typically with 8 to 16 dark brown vertical bars on the side. The mouth is large, with the posterior edge of the maxilla extending to beneath the eye.

Fry and juvenile diets consist primarily of zooplankton and insect larvae. Adults have a more diverse palate, subsisting on such varied foods as crayfish, amphibians, insects, and other fish. Adults also cannibalize young of other parents. Although large adults are often the top predatory fish in their habitats, young adults and juveniles are often preyed upon by other fish, including other smallmouth bass and turtles.

Today, smallmouth bass are very popular game fish, frequently sought by anglers using conventional spinning and bait casting gear, as well as fly fishing tackle. The smallmouth is highly regarded for its topwater fighting ability when hooked - old fishing journals referred to the smallmouth bass as "ounce for ounce and pound for pound the gamest fish that swims".

The smallmouth bass is found in clearer water than the largemouth, especially streams, rivers, and the rocky areas and stumps and also sandy bottoms of lakes and reservoirs. The smallmouth prefers cooler water temperatures than its cousin the largemouth bass, and may be found in both still and moving water.

Because it is relatively intolerant of pollution, the smallmouth bass is a good natural indicator of a healthy environment, though it can better adjust to changes in water condition than most trout species. Carnivorous, its diet comprises crayfish, insects, and smaller fish, the young also feeding on zooplankton.

Coho salmon are dark metallic blue to black on top with bright silver sides. They have black spots across the top of their body and on the top of their tail fin, but not on the bottom, which distinguishes them from chinook salmon. The gums of the lower jaw are gray or white. They are excellent swimmers and have muscular bodies that are both long and thick.

The native range for coho salmon is from California to Japan and, because they are so adaptable, they have been successfully introduced in many lakes in Canada and the Great Lakes region including Lake Erie.

Before entering the ocean, young coho salmon feed on aquatic insects, zooplankton, and small fish. As adults in the ocean, coho salmon use their sharp teeth to feed on other fishes, squid, and crustaceans. The large amounts of euphasid shrimp they eat account for the deep, purplish red of their flesh. In the Great Lakes, they eat alewives, lake chubs, rainbow smelt, and herring.

The coho salmon is one of the most popular game fish for anglers in both freshwater and saltwater regions. Coho are also spectacular fighters and considered the most acrobatic of the salmon, often leaping when hooked.

While in the ocean, coho salmon are taken by trolling with herring or other fishes, as well as on spoons. In fresh water coho strike salmon eggs, flies, spoons, or spinners. Casting with a fly is also successful, as long as the fisherman can handle a long line to cover the fast-moving schools.

The appearance of seagulls or other birds gathering to feed can tip off the angler to the whereabouts of schooling coho salmon. Some Great Lakes fishermen locate coho salmon by watching for seagulls attacking herring in the water. Herring travel along the surface in large, tightly bunched groups.

Coho salmon spend part of their life in the ocean and part in small, coastal freshwater streams. They choose streams with a weaker current than other salmon, such as chinooks. Young coho salmon also require adequate streamside cover to hide underneath, such as submerged branches and undercut banks. Some coho salmon spend their entire life in lakes, particularly those transplanted in the Great Lakes region.

Steelhead have a bluish-gray back and upper sides and bright, silvery lower sides, with a crisp separation between the two colors. The upper halves of their bodies are heavily speckled with small black spots. Their tail fin is completely covered with spots and may be squared or slightly forked. The interior of the steelhead’s mouth is white. The body is more elongate than other types of rainbow trout, and they are fast, strong swimmers.

Steelhead are native to the Pacific Ocean, but travel to inland streams and rivers spanning from southern California to southern Alaska during spawning runs. During this migration the steelhead may be found as far as inland as Idaho and Montana. They have also been successfully introduced to the Great Lakes region and its tributaries, as well as other freshwater lakes and rivers.

Adult steelhead feed on squid, euphasid, amphipods and fish. While young, steelhead feed on insects, copepods, amphipods and other crustaceans, as well as other small fish.

Steelhead are one of the most prized sport fish of inland anglers because of their tasty meat, large size, and strong fighting abilities. They are notably acrobatic and have been observed leaping five feet out of the water when hooked. Although steelhead are caught in the ocean, most are taken in the river systems in which they return to spawn.

Steelhead present a challenge to both find and land. Conditions on rivers change rapidly and a productive fishing spot one day for steelhead may be barren the next. They are, however, often found in the same parts of the river year after year. Thus, for the unfamiliar angler, it is recommended that a guide be hired or consult with local residents that are familiar with a given river.

If that is not an option, remember that steelhead like fast, deep-running water, so cast in white-water areas and the deep holes of the stream. Areas on the edges of fast water or where the water is broken by a rock, log, or another object may also prove fruitful.

Also try the heads or tails of pools. If the fish are on or near their spawning bed, they will generally be found in shallow water with a gravel bottom, but could still be in deeper spots nearby.

Another factor to consider is the season. Steelhead seek out faster water or shady areas during summer, while they tend to be in the slower stretches if the water temperature is below 40 degrees.

In rivers, they bait well on salmon or steelhead eggs, shrimp, crayfish tails and night crawlers, but also take lures, such as spoons, spinners and jigs, bobbers and flies. Flies that are colorful often work best.

Steelhead are anadromous, living in both fresh water and salt water. In fresh water, they prefer temperatures below 70 F and can tolerate temperatures anywhere from 32 to 80 F. They require clean spawning rivers and prefer the faster running parts of those streams.

The yellow perch is a species of perch found in the United States and Canada. Yellow perch look similar to the European perch but are paler and more yellowish, with less red in the fins. They have 6-8 dark vertical bars on their sides. The yellow perch is in the same family as the walleye and sauger, but in a different family from the white perch. Yellow perch size can vary greatly between bodies of water, but adults are usually between 4-10 inches in length and can reach weights of a few pounds. The perch can live for up to 11 years, and older perch are often much larger than average where the maximum recorded length is 21.0 inches and the largest recorded weight is 4.2 lb. Large yellow perch are often called "jumbo perch."

The perch spawns at the end of April or beginning of May, depositing it upon weeds, or the branches of trees or shrubs that have become immersed in the water; it does not come into condition again until July.

Yellow perch are north temperate fish. They extend from west central Canada and the Hudson Bay area east to New Brunswick, down to South Carolina and west to Kansas.

Young yellow perch feed on zooplankton, then as they grow they switch to benthic macroinvertebrates and finally fish. In Lake Erie and other lakes, young yellow perch switch from mainly zooplankton to benthos during midsummer declines in zooplankton biomass. Yellow perch have small backward slanting teeth lining the jaws and gill rakers that strain out small pelagic food sources from the water. Their mouth is subterminal which makes it easy for them to feed at the bottom. Yellow perch swallow their food whole. In large fish, the net energy gained by eating large prey, such as benthos and fish, outweighs the disadvantages of capture and digestion.

Perch are an important food source for top predators such as the walleye, northern pike, muskellunge, and in colder waters lake trout.

Yellow Perch are one of the finest flavored of all panfish, and this has led to misuse of their name in the restaurant industry. Menus will sometimes list "White Perch", "Rock Perch" or simply "Perch" that are actually other species, usually panfish in the Centrarchidae (sunfish) family.

The best time for fishing for perch is from June to November though they bite reasonably well all year and are readily taken through the ice. They haunt the neighborhood of heavy deep eddies, camp sheathings, beds of weeds, with sharp streams near trees or bushes growing in or overhanging the water.

Yellow perch are found mainly in lakes and sometimes in impoundments of larger rivers. Clear water is important as excessive turbidity and silt could lead to death of perch. Perch do however have a high tolerance for low oxygen conditions. They inhabit water of moderate temperature, avoiding cold deep water and warm surface waters during the summer. Young perch generally inhabit shallower water than larger ones, though as temperature increases all move to cooler, deeper water.