Tackling Late Season Perch
by Ron Anlauf

It ain’t over till it’s over, and if you’re a perch fisherman, it ain’t over!  In fact, the best of the best is yet to come, and is something you really don’t want to miss.   Jumbo perch are what we’re talking about, and the action is never better than it is during the late, late, ice period.

It’s not that big eye poppin’ perch suddenly turn on and go on a mad rampage, as there are some good catches made all season long.  It’s just that by late ice they’re more likely to be bunched up, and the odds of finding at least a few that are in the right mood greatly increases. 

During the hard water period there are seasonal movements that can lead perch from shallow water, to deep, and back again.  The thing is, after the earliest part of the season, most of the action is hit and miss.  The mega schools you can run into a first ice seem to bust up, and you’re more likely to find little wolf packs of perch, here and there, and the action becomes a lot more sporadic.   However, by late ice those little packs come together and start to show up in masse and can be found holding along shoreline related structure, like hard bottom breaks and drop offs.

The author reveals the secrets to nailing jumbo perch like this

Other key areas are main lake basins and soft bottom flats, out in the middle of nowhere.  If the truth be known, structure fish are a lot easier to find than those running the flats.  On the other hand, flat fish tend to run much bigger on average, and may be your best bet for icing numbers of true jumbos.

Structure gives you a starting point, and is something to key on when you start looking for perch from scratch.    By starting close, you may save yourself some time, especially if the little buggers have already started making their move back in.  A good plan of action would start with a shoreline break, and then head deeper and deeper until you may eventually end up a mile or more off shore out in the middle of nowhere, depending on what’s available.  

A handheld portable depth finder like the Marcum LXi that looks like a flashlight is the slickest tool for finding structure and can save you some valuable time.  With an LXi you can shoot through three feet or more of ice and better yet it will even mark fish!  The first reading it gives you is depth, followed by an audible alarm and flashing depth for anything holding off the bottom!  With a self lighting torch and an LXi you can look look look, until you find exacltly what you’re looking for.   

When you start your search, don’t be afraid to get into shallow water before heading out into the deep. If you start too deep you could miss the whole thing and waste valuable fishing time.  That suggestion comes from experience as I have been guilty as charged more than once. 

A good example of that occurred a few years back when I got wind of a hot bite on the west side of Mille Lacs Lake off of a shoreline sand break near Rocky Reef, very late in the season.   My son and I were going to cash in on the fun and arrived with high hopes (we always do), and started with the break where it dropped from fourteen feet of water into about twenty.  The fish just weren’t there, so we kept heading deeper and deeper and drilling hole after hole with little to show for our efforts.  We’d punch a hole and give it about fifteen or twenty minutes for any sign of life to show up before moving on to the next.   After about four or five hours of rather fruitless angling we decided to head back.

On the way in we thought we’d give it one last try and picked it up where we had started and headed shallow instead.  After a few holes and a couple of moves we found them big time, in about ten feet of water.  We quickly put together a decent catch but it could have been a whole lot better, if we had just started where we finished. 

Great perch baits include jigging spoons like the 1/16oz Northland Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon, tipped with half of a fathead minnow.  The Buck-Shot can draw them in from a long ways off and you may want to give it some extra time before you give up on a spot. 

Another advantage to the spoon is the fact that it gets down the hole fast, and fast exactly what you need when you’re over a hot bunch of jumbos.  They can turn on and off at the drop of a hat so you better make the best of it while you can.

Set lines with a small jig tipped with a spike or waxie are another good option and can be used in conjunction with the spoon.  Jigs like the #8 Northland Doodle Bug will often trigger fish that have come in for a look at the spoon but aren’t charged up enough to take it.  A Doodle Bug combined with a light action rod sitting perfectly still in a holder is the best setup for the technique and about all the action you’ll need to get the right response.

Another consideration when your on the hunt is the fact that late ice perch location can vary from year to year and you never really know for sure where the good action is going to be.  Just because a spot was hot last year doesn’t mean it will be the same this season.

The thing is, to be consistent you better be ready to make some moves and drill a few holes.  See you on the late ice.