Aggressive jigging baits, including those that vibrate or rattle, attract roaming perch and trigger bites from highly active fish. (Photo courtesy of Rapala)
January 14, 2025
By Scott Mackenthun
Of all the sportfish pursued through the ice, few are as nomadic as the beloved yellow perch. Perch schools are always moving, and while modern ice anglers know the value of mobility, few practice it to the extent necessary. To keep on roaming schools, ice anglers must fully embrace a mobile mentality, never staying too long in one spot. Adopt this mindset and plan accordingly, and you will almost certainly catch more and bigger perch.
LEARN THE PROGRAM When safe ice covers Midwestern lakes and reservoirs, masses of perch anglers descend. While some may fish a few favorite spots in the course of a day, many post up on structure, setting up a shelter or cutting a few holes. They break out tackle boxes, rod cases and heaters. A few even fire up grills. These folks unwittingly set themselves up to fail, with each piece of gear unpacked making it harder to remain mobile and find and stay on fish.
For Minnesota guide Tony Roach (roachsguideservice.com ), mobility is everything with perch. He even has a name for his technique: ice trolling. “Ice trolling is the concept that you’re always moving,” Roach says. “You wouldn’t just pull up to a spot in your boat [in summer] and sit there all day, so you shouldn’t do the same in the winter.”
As Roach drills holes along structure, he uses 2D sonar to find fish and (more recently) forward-facing sonar to follow them when they move. The guide’s preferred ice-trolling strategy involves a team of anglers working together. A few anglers drill holes while others mark structure on a snowmobile or four-wheeler, or on foot. Others still run electronics, both forward-facing and 2D sonar.
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“Really, you’re just picking up the active, aggressive fish and then moving on like you would do in the open water,” Roach says. “Let‘s say you pull up to a hump in open water and you want to cast a plastic for walleyes. You’re going to work that entire structure and cast to the fish. We do the same thing while ice fishing, where we’re actively hunting down these fish and then moving on to the next set of structures.”
With this approach, he says, you’re always on active fish, even when they’re in a negative mood. You’re covering ground to find aggressive fish. Of course, when hole hopping, it pays to have a plan rather than to aimlessly wander about drilling holes.
The best perch anglers cover lots of ground. Whether using a snowmobile, ATV or your legs, plan to move often, and don’t linger on inactive fish. (Photo courtesy of Clam Outdoors) FIND THE FISH Good perch locations vary depending on time of season, prey availability and predator avoidance. Ice trolling lets anglers quickly eliminate dead spots, find productive ones and predict where fish might be found again. Still, a starting point is helpful, and Roach has a few ideas.
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Early in the ice season, the guide targets the shallows—weed beds, flats or both, assuming he can find flats with vegetation. By mid-January, he says, perch shift, sliding deeper and setting up off breaks. Further into January and February, he suggests perch feed on invertebrates that are popping out of the mud—blood worms, mayfly nymphs, fish fly nymphs, etc. Roach says significant bug activity usually occurs just beneath the ice beginning in late January or early February and extending into March.
“When you get into mid- to late-March, you start to see the shift of perch into those shallow-water zones of weed beds and flats,” Roach says. “It’s amazing the number of lakes where I’ve found perch when there’s still 2 1/2 to 3 feet of ice and they’re only in 6 or 7 feet of water, and those fish are up there feeding.”
He’s observed similar patterns of perch moving shallow early and late and roaming basins mid-winter in lakes where jumbo perch feed heavily on molting crayfish, too. Even with these starting points, though, ice trolling is likely the best way to determine productive patterns on any given lake or system.
Mobile perch anglers should pack light. Bring two rods, electronics and a tackle box with both aggressive and finesse options. (Photo courtesy of Rapala) PACK LIGHT Adopting a mobile perch strategy also means committing to traveling light. Roach recommends grabbing two rods, a bait pack with live bait or plastics, a pocket-sized tackle box and your electronics. Everything should be easily and quickly packable, and rods, reels, tackle and baits should be versatile.
While perch frustrate due to their roaming tendencies, their behavior is also mercurial. Some days they’re aggressive; other days anglers may not even detect their light bites. Therefore, gear must be both portable and adaptable, accommodating their various temperaments.
Because Roach moves regularly and spends most of his time outside of ice shelters, he prefers long ice rods of 30 to 32 inches. His favorite is St. Croix’s Croix Custom Ice Perch Seeker (CI32MLXF), which features medium-light power and a fast action with a soft tip for bite detection as well as ample backbone. He says the rod works forvarious depths and presentations and pairs well with smaller 1000- or 1500-size spinning reels and 4-pound-test line. He likes Suffix’s Advance monofilament for ice trolling due to its reduced stretch versus traditional monofilament, noting it fishes like braid without freezing, as braid sometimes does.
Roach often uses VMC’s Rattling Roach Spoons, adding that he likes the dressed marabou treble, which produces excellent action in the water, even when not being actively worked. Beyond using rattling spoons to call in aggressive perch, Roach employs smaller jigs, like VMC’s Tungsten Probe Jigs and Tungsten Mustache Jigs, for more subtle, finesse presentations when fish come in but won’t initially strike. VMC’s Hatchet Spoon and Rapala’s Jigging Raps, Rippin’ Raps and Slab Raps are other solid, aggressive options. He usesthe larger baits (No. 4 or 5 Rippin’ Raps, No. 5 Jigging Raps or 1/8-ounce rattling spoons) as attractors to determine if fish are around and to draw in roaming perch.
The larger lures also reduce catches of smaller perch. When fish do come in but don’t bite—or after he’s caught some of the more active fish but other negative or neutral fish are still around—he’ll use the smaller jig.
When perch are in neutral or negative moods, small jigs often outshine spoons. VMC’s Tungsten Mustache Jigs work well in these scenarios. (Photo courtesy of Rapala) STAY OR GO While Roach usually moves all day, he’ll hunker down if he finds a hot location. He’ll also revisit areas that were productive or held inactive fish earlier in the day, especially during peak feeding periods (usually mornings or evenings but sometimes midday).
“I’ve had many days where we caught some fish, but the bite died off, or we got there and the fish didn’t bite,” he says. “We moved on, found aggressive fish elsewhere, then eventually circled back to the spot and had unbelievable afternoons and evenings. That scenario happens a lot.”
Roach realizes many anglers can’t understand leaving fish behind but says it’s sometimes necessary. He adds that winter perch fishing is always “a balancing act between moving too much and not moving enough” and involves “tough decisions, like moving off fish.” If fish are there and not biting, he says it’s OK—and often the right decision—to leave and return later.
When weather conditions are too harsh for excessive travel, Roach hunkers down on a spot, usually setting up on a point’s top edge (the shallow portion).
As soon as the bite slows, and if it’s still relatively early in the morning, he says he and his clients will slide into deeper water to work those same fish as well as new fish moving through. He adds that nasty weather or cold fronts seem to affect deeper fish less than those that are up shallow, which push off of flats down into depressions and basins. Roach says that setting up on these transitions—areas between flats and depressions and spots where two different structure types meet at different depths—allows you to pick off aggressive fish moving through these locations.
With today’s electronics—2D or forward facing—the guide says you can often read a fish’s mood. Note how aggressively fish move toward baits, whether they hesitate when approaching, how much distance fish maintain from baits and how they react to jigging.
This helps gauge if fish are in a positive, neutral or negative feeding mood. If fish are present and aggressive, Roach continues fishing. If perch act passive or simply aren’t around, he moves.
“As soon as the aggressive fish are gone, or if we aren’t marking them, I’m out of there,” Roach says. “I don’t care if I drilled 200 holes in that spot. We’re on a mission to catch fish. It’s not the time to be worried about fishing all the holes that we drilled. Keep most of your gear in your fish house tub, truck or snowmobilevuntil you’ve [found a spot you want to fi sh] for a while. Packing light is key in ice fishing. It’s really easy to get slowed down by all your gear.”
This article was featured in the December-January 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe .