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Spring Fishing Techniques
On ultra-light spinning equipment, tie a No.6 hook to four-pound-test line. Add a slipshot and a bobber, suspending the bait a foot from the bottom floor. Hook a live worm or minnow and cast into the weedy spawning areas. Artificial lures such as spoons, spinners, and flies catch larger perch.
During spawning season, perch will bite almost any lure, bait, or brightly coloured hook. In the summer, schools of perch move into deep water with a sand or rock bottom. To find big summer perch in twenty to fifty feet of water, slowly jig or troll a small spoon, spinner, worm, or dead minnow. Troll the area around jutting rockpiles or weedbeds in water twelve feet or deeper. When a school of perch is found, remember the depth and continue slowly jigging or trolling at that depth - the schools are constantly on the move. At dusk, the large perch return to the shallows to forage in water more than ten feet deep.
Schools of surface-feeding yellow perch often take flies; try a No.6 brown nymph.
Winter Fishing Techniques
In the winter, yellow perch fishing is a favourite pastime. To find the big perch, some anglers cut a string of holes from twenty-five feet of water to the shallows. Most fish are in water between fifteen and twenty feet deep, but in heavily snowed areas where little light reaches the ice, some big perch are in water only three feet deep.
Three-inch minnows or small jigs and spoons are attractive to winter perch. Using a simple ice-jigging rod, slowly jig the bait or lure one foot from the sandy bottom. Set the hook at the faintest vibration, but if a hole does not produce any more bites after fifteen minutes, move to a new hole and continue jigging at the same depth.
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