The Orillia Perch Festival may be history for another year, but the business of studying the species continues.

As the middle of July approaches, volunteers from the Twin Lakes Conservation Club are continuing to get calls from area anglers, with respect to their ongoing perch study.

“The calls to our 1-800 phone line have slowed down since the end of the festival and the perch have spread out in the lakes. But we’re still getting calls,” said Twin Lakes club president Warren Howes.

Earlier this year, the club teamed up with the Ministry of Natural Resources to undertake a major study of perch. Part of the study involved tracking the movement of the fish around the Georgian Bay region.

Just prior to the start of the Orillia Perch Festival in April, a total of 1,000 perch were fitted with orange tags and released around Orillia.

Anglers reeling in the tagged fish are asked to call information into a special phone number imprinted on the tag.

“We’ve had 73 perch called in to us. Of that number, 42 have been re-released into the lake, which is good.

“That way we can continue to track them,” said Howes.

Most of the fish reeled in with tags have been hooked in and around the Orillia area, but one gentleman called in to report he had reeled in a perch with one of the special orange tags at Jackson’s Point.

“Another guy also called in from the Barrie waterfront, indicating he had caught one of the fish there. I thought that was really neat that they went all that way south,” said Howes.

An interesting sidebar from the study is the capture and release of the same perch twice.

 “We released this one little guy and someone caught it during the festival and brought it in. We then tagged it and released it and it was caught again. Both times it was caught, it was at The Narrows,” said Howes.

Records kept by the conservation club show the same perch was caught on two consecutive days.

With each passing month, the information taking in from the study is being charted on a map and the information sent to MNR staff at the Midhurst office.

Howes said he is looking forward to the winter ice fishing season, hoping the perch will be more active, hungrier and more likely to go for the bait.

The perch study is a two-year project involving the members of the conservation club and the MNR.