I've got a 2.5 acre pond on the property. It's 20' at the deepest and 4-5' in the shallows. We've owned it for about 18 months and so far have caught bluegills, largemouth bass, black crappie, bullhead and just recently a yellow perch. The perch was a pleasant surprise and I'd like to catch more.

I've been trying small spinners, cicadas, and other recommended lures but all I can catch are bluegills and small crappies. Any suggestions on how to catch perch but not the others?

Thanks,

Chad

they all bite the same baits, and share the same habitat, so it's tough to target strictly perch in a pond full of gills.  Perch are school fish, with the small size of the pond I don't know how it would affect them, but typically if you find a perch, there's more in the same area.  So what I would do is next time you catch one, try to take note of exactly where it was, and what you did to catch it, and then try to replicate that.

I was afraid of that. Will just have to keep fishing. 

Around here we catch yellow perch by using small jigs (like what you would use for crappie) jigged on the bottom, usually in deeper water.

I would try fishing deeper with little jigs and beetle spins.

Yeppers.

Jigs and smaller presentations work best. My boys (6 and 7 years old) caught over 100 perch on pink jigs with a white grub on it.

Last night I caught 25 bluegills and 0 perch. Will try jigging deeper this evening and see what happens. Thanks.

2" Silver and Blue (or Black) Rapalas.  Silver spinners.  White or Yellow Jigs work as well. 

That's not a big (but it is DEEP) pond.  With all of the other species that you list I'd tend to think that there probably aren't many of them.  They are easier for Largemouths and Crappie to eat than young sunnies & bullhead so their population probably gets kept in check pretty well.  My "backyard" pond is 54 acres (only 12' deep) and has the same species. And there really aren't many Perch for that very reason. 

Makes sense webertime.

Tried jigging some tiny white and yellow grubs tonight and had some success. Caught mostly crappie at about 9' for a while, then picked up 2 perch just off the bottom. The sunnies and bluegills didn't bother the jigs much.

That mix is fine with me. Very happy with it. It's nice to be able to control what bites a little better. Thanks for the advice everyone.