deep or shallow...perch or bluegill?

I found big perch in shallow water and big bluegills in deep....first off I've never caught many decent bluegills in shallow water outside of spawning time but am told often that they are there...in search to prove this...I found 12-13 perch no bluegills....they are still deep I guess. What are your preferences or "theories"

This time of year, especially in deeper lakes. 20+ fow. The perch are starting to come up shallower for spawning. They can still be caught deep but I have better luck in the 8-14 fow range. Early in the winter I fish the same depths but as winter hits it's peak I am usually in the deepest section of the lake on deep flats or deep weedlines. After the weeds start to die the gills seem to head out and suspend over deeper water. As the winter progresses the gills and other suspending fish seem to be found closer and closer to the bottom where the water is warmer and there is more oxygen. By this time of year I would be targeting gills within a few feet of the bottom over some structure or a break or if you fish some manmade lakes like I do with little to no structure I fish the deepest holes and flats and move around a lot. Without structure it seems these fish more around a little more.

Holy Cow! How big was that perch?

i have never caught jumbos of either species of fish in less than 5 ft of water. i have however, gotten them to commit to coming up the water 2 or 3 feet to bite in the same 5ft of water. for perch on bago, i have had some success shallow when a lot of guys are out deep. for example, i'll be fishing between 5 and 12 FOW and catching nice perch where most people are looking to get out to 16/17 FOW. for gills, i have better success shallower than i do deeper, but all the areas i fish are back bays that are less than 9 feet of water. my brother has a bluegill hole he fishes and it's only 2.5 to 3 feet deep. two seasons ago he pulled out a limit of 8" or better fish. he swears by the shallows for gills. won't go in anything less than 10' for perch though.

I catch Perch on the same lake in 5-6 f.o.w. in thick weeds, with tip-ups, and I jig out deeper, I catch them in both spots. This is a smaller lake with the deepest being 22 ft. I use large shiners in the shallows, and large shiner heads on a buckshot spoon out deeper. This is consistant all winter.

I think it really depends on the body of water and the conditions at the time. In January this year on a well known perch lake the majority of the pressure was out deep, 35-40 fow. These guys were catching some fish, but my group found active jumbos in 12 fow, and caught them consistently over a period of 2 weeks. It reminded me of an article on walleyes I read a year or so back about "two stage" bites. It basically said that on any given body of water there can be a simultaneous deep and shallow bite. I can recall a few other times where fish were caught both out on deep flats and in vegetation at the same time. This whole fishing thing seems way too complicated sometimes...

depends what lake most of the time ill catch perch in 25-40 feet gills on the other hand in bout 8 thats cause i only fish 1 lake for gills and that as deep as the lake gets