I'm gonna guess that's a pre-spawn open water female from the big lake. They may get longer than that in Lake Erie, but its pretty rare.
We used to fish them all the time in the first 2-3 miles off shore. They seem to tend to school by size class. If you found one fish in the 12-13" class (a big perch, even for the lake, 9-11' is far more common), you could usually count on catching quite a few in the same size class so long as you didn't drift out of them.
While I really liked to eat them, it was pretty boring fishing. Tunk, tunk.. One perch, (tunk) one sheephead. One perch, one sheephead. And on and on. On small minnows hooked through the back, usually.
The only good part of it was spending time with my Dad.
