Panther Pond is a 1,439 acre body of water located in Raymond, Maine (see The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map 5 B2). One way to reach the ice is to turn right on Meadow Road (Route 121) from Main Street in Raymond (off Route 302, a.k.a. Roosevelt Trail), drive north for 0.5 miles before turning right unto Giselle Lane. Park your vehicle on the side of this road. A short snowmobile trail leads directly to the pond.
Panther Pond is filled with large schools of voracious white perch
Panther Pond offers a smorgasbord of species for the eager hard-water angler, including largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, white perch, and pickerel. The state also provides an annual stocking of 7” or 8” juvenile landlocked Atlantic salmon. However, the pond is not considered to support a strong salmon fishery, presumably because most of these naïve stocked fish fall prey to the voracious hordes of bass and perch that live in these waters. Click here for a depth map and more fisheries information.
The white perch flag action typically comes in spurts as a school moves in and out of the bait fish “kill zone”
I reach Giselle Lane at 1:30 pm, load my equipment on the sled, and walk unto the small bay located at the end of the snowmobile trail. This bay is quite shallow (< 3 ft) when the ice is thick but is a great place for fast yellow perch and pickerel action, sprinkled with an occasional largemouth bass. But my goal today is to catch some of the fat 2-pound white perch that abound in Panther Pond. For that, I have to exit the shallow bay, keeping the island to my left, and walk about halfway towards the opposite shoreline. It takes me less than 15 minutes to reach my target area because the ice is covered with minimal snow which makes for a quick and easy stroll. I drill a hole through the ice with my auger to check the depth and measure 26 ft (and 16” of ice). That’s about as deep as this part of the lake gets, so I’m good. I deploy five tip-ups with the baitfish placed 4 ft, 8 ft, 12 ft, 16 ft, and 20 ft below the ice. White perch swim around and forage in large schools. Placing my baitfish at staggered depths helps determine where the white perch are feeding so that I can adjust the depth of the non-active traps accordingly.
The flag of my four-foot deep trap goes up as I’m still setting up the remaining tip-ups. Fantastic, the fish are active this afternoon! The spool is turning rapidly when I look down the hole and the line is shooting out sideways. The sight of a spinning spool is always thrilling! I don’t hesitate, pick up the trap, let go of some extra line, wait until the fish removes the slack, and set the hook. OMG, the angry weight at the other end of the line tells me this is definitely NOT a white perch. For a moment, I dare imagine that I’ve hooked a big landlocked salmon, but my hopes are crushed when instead I bring up a huge (24”) and fat (4.5 pound) pickerel! What was this fish thinking to be cruising like that right under the ice over 26 ft of water??
This huge pickerel fancied itself a salmon and sure fooled me for a while!
I experience three distinct white perch feeding flurries over the next 3 hours, interspersed by long periods of inactivity. It is clear from the flag action when a school arrives and when it moves away. I get a total of 12 flags, and land the one huge pickerel mentioned earlier, together with seven white perch and one yellow perch. Adjusting my tip-ups definitely helped place the bait at the proper depth. I thoroughly enjoyed the action this afternoon, although the northwest wind was fierce and cold. I highly recommend fishing this spot on Panther Pond to anyone who wants to bag a bunch of big white perch for the frying pan or to make a delicious fish soup.
White perch are delicious “eating fish”. And we can keep as many as we want because Maine does not have a size or daily bag limit for this species!
The results: I caught one huge pickerel (24”), seven white perch (largest 17”), and one yellow perch in 3 hours of fun but cold fishing.
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