Ice Fishing For Perch

With the hard water season nearing, it is almost time to start ice fishing for perch.

Perch are one of the most sought after fish to catch ice fishing. They are easy to catch and delicious to eat. Locating and catching perch is easy to do once you get the hang of it. Make your ice fishing season even better this year!

Perch school up in large groups during the winter months. A school can be anywhere from 20 to even 200 perch. Once you locate one of these schools, you will be catching perch all season long.

Perch are usuall found in around 20 feet of water during the ice fishing season. They are most easily located if you have fished the water during the summer months because you are probably already aware of the lakes structure. Look for drop offs that go down to around 20-30 feet. Fish the bottom of the drop offs as the perch tend to school from the middle to the bottom of the water column. Drop offs are easily found with a hydrographic chart of the lake, a fish finder or better yet, a flasher. Ice fishing cameras are also quite useful. You lower them into the water and there is a live feed up to the screen so you can see exactly what is going on below.

If there are perch in the spot you have chosen, you should start catching them within 20 minutes. Do not waste your time in one spot for several hours. If there is not a school there within 20 minutes, chances are there isn't one in the area.

Once you have found your spot, make sure you remember where it is. Use a GPS, take land marks, leave your hut there, do whatever is required. Perch will school around a certain area for an entire season at times. They are attracted to that spot for a reason, so they will stay there or attract other schools as well. This is the same reason you are attracted to that spot and continue to fish there!... because you will be catching your limit of perch.

There are plenty of techniques to successfully catch perch ice fishing. One of my personal favorites, and most successful techniques is putting a 1 inch winnow, grub, worm etc. Gulp Alive on a glow in the dark jig head. The brand I find most successful is Jig-n-Glow but anything would work really. Try using different colors and weights and you'll catch tons of perch!

I have found that I would be in a successful spot, catch 10 perch in 10 minutes, and then there would be no fish for about 10 minutes. Then another school would pass by and we would catch another 10 in a few minutes. So just remember to be patient as well! Once you have found a good spot, it will most likely be successful all season.

Good look to all of you this upcoming ice fishing season! See you out there!