By Daniel Quade. Pot-bellied yellow perch topping a pound are prized catches across the Ice Belt. Unfortunately, finding these footballs during the midwinter months often means combing sprawling deep-water basins, which can be an intimidating prospect even for the hardiest of jumbo hunters. Link to Lindy’s Webiste.
To help you find more perch in less time, we offer the following insight from longtime perch stalker Jon Thelen, who’s adept at the art of intercepting wandering herds of these broad-shouldered brutes.
Thelen, a veteran guide and host of Lindy’s popular Fish Ed TV on Fox Sports North, is no stranger to tracking down deepwater jumbos on huge fisheries such as Lake of the Woods, Winnibigoshish and Mille Lacs Lake—not to mention scores of smaller systems. Rather than blindly drilling here and there hoping to luck into the mother lode, he fast-forwards his perch searches by focusing on areas offering shifts in bottom composition.
“Transition zones from hard to soft bottoms are my number one priority,” he says.
Soft, mucky substrates can be hotbeds of insect life that obese perch love to root out of the goo. Harder bottoms hold baitfish, which also attract mature perch and other top-end predators.
“Where the two types of bottom collide, jumbo perch have multiple forage options, making the transition areas more attractive than either one of the bottom types by itself,” Thelen said.
Key depths often vary from one lake to another, but Thelen categorizes anything over 25 feet as deep, and notes that the 30- to 35-foot zone commonly holds perch in fisheries across the Upper Midwest. Shallow, bathtub-type lakes lacking water deeper than 10 feet are exceptions, but even here, bottom transitions can hold the key to catching the biggest fish in the system.
Once atop a promising bottom-content intersection, Thelen punches a string of pilot holes and goes to work with loud, flashy lures that help call hungry perch from afar.
“Lures that draw attention to themselves are especially key when you have 30 feet of water, 3 feet of ice and a foot or more of snow filtering out the daylight,” he says.
Thelen added a new go-to lure to his arsenal this year, the Perch Talker, and has been tearing up jumbos with it. Armed with a combination of colored brass beads and discs, the dropper-style lure has proven itself for perch and other panfish, plus pike and walleyes, in a number of waters. The dropper chain configuration allows him to catch fish regardless of their mood – with the bait separate from the flash and sound, even spooky fish take the bait. Tippings typically hinge on the predominant forage in the area.
“If I’m on the soft-bottomed side of the transition where perch are feeding on insects, I tip with waxworms and eurolarvae,” he says. “Jumbos cruising the crossroads or leaning toward the hard-bottom side are more apt to hit a minnow head.”
In both cases, Thelen jigs aggressively during the attraction phase of his presentation, then once he marks fish on sonar he tones down the jig strokes to jiggles and pauses.
It’s worth noting that as winter progresses or when facing a tough bite anytime, Thelen’s jigging becomes more muted to match declining perch activity levels. Classic down-tempo tactics include dropping a spoon like the Frostee or smallest Rattl’n Flyer to bottom and pounding it several times before slowly raising it 12 to 24 inches, then pausing and jiggling to entice following perch to strike.
“Another factor this time of year is less daily movement of the fish,” Thelen said. “For me, this means I spend less time at a hole if nothing’s happening. I hop from hole-to-hole more often until I find fish.”
Throughout the midwinter period, Thelen wields a light- to ultralight-power panfish rod to help detect soft strikes. “Medium-light walleye rods may give you a nice, crisp jigging action, but lighter panfish-style setups allow you feel subtle bites without letting skittish perch know you’re on the other end of the line,” he says.
While jigging, Thelen eyes his sonar screen, using it to assess the fish’s mood, and also as a strike-predictor. When a fish moves up to the lure and he sees the rodtip move or if he lifts and feel extra weight, it’s time to set the hook.
If a few curious onlookers linger once Thelen has extracted the aggressive biters from a particular pod of perch, he switches to a smaller presentation like Lindy’s size 10 Tungsten Toad tipped with a single, nose-hooked waxworm.
“Tungsten’s density makes it fall fast for its size, which is a huge plus when fishing small jigs in deep water,” he says.
Jigstrokes include similar bottom-thumping, slow-raising strategies as those employed during a tough bite.
“Actually, the Tungsten Toad is a contender anytime perch are roaming a transition area, feeding on a variety of things,” he notes.
As winter wanes and runoff from snowmelt floods into the lakes via rivers, streams and ditches, Thelen shifts his jumbo search patterns shallower. But through the heart of the midwinter period, his deep program is worth following to find and catch foot-long footballs roaming deep transition lines on lakes across the North.