I have a horse trough in our backyard that my kids keep turtles in and we always put left over perch/shad in for them to eat. I moved the Turtles inside when it got cold but left about 6 live perch in the tank. It froze solid to my knowledge, it only had about 6 inches of water in it, above ground. After the ice melted, I was checking it out and there are 6 perch swimming around inside.

I grew up in Wisconsin, and the general understanding was that sunfish would not survive freezing solid. That's why ponds shallower than 6-feet contained no fish. However, fish are really talented at hiding someplace safe when the temps fall.

Sorry, I'm too lazy to DuckDuckGo the actual answer to this question.

Go catch some and throw them in the freezer...a few days later go thaw the suckers out and see. haha. Now I'm interested to see what happens.

No. Frozen perch are dead perch. You can find them in the frozen foods isle at Walmart! On a similar topic this was posted a few days ago in the thread “Gators in Waxahachie”?: it is amazing to me is the way alligators can survive in freezing environments by hanging below the ice in a hibernated state with their snouts frozen out of the ice like a snorkel. https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/19/us/alligator-snout-freeze-icing-trnd/index.html

Tickle their nose!

Sunfish have ways to survive. You would be surprised !

And I think if they're in Walmart hopefully they'd be gutted before they're put in the frozen foods section lol.