Hardwater Transition Within the Day
As the Early Ice Shallow Water Walleye bite wanes in the mid morning hours we switch gears. The mid morning and early afternoon are Perch Search time. On the early Ice, like walleyes, we find a lot of our perch in shallower as compared to later in the year and often on some type of structure. Not necessarily humps, but something different on the bottom, like depressions or brush piles.
This is a numbers game, drill and fish as many holes as possible in the shortest period of time in likely Perch habitat.
Hole Sets: What am I talking about!!
We call our series’ of holes, hole sets. When initiating our first hole set search I like to employ ‘hole set’ lines of 10-20 holes, 20 to 30 paces apart. I like to drill 2 or 3 ‘hole set’ lines 30 to 40 yards apart so that I can stay in fishing mode for longer periods. I don’t like to dip back and forth between drill-fish-drill-fish too quickly, and to be quite honest with you, I am getting older, and after drilling 30 holes, I’m winded.
Once the 2 or 3lines of ‘hole sets’ are drilled I will return to the original, 1st hole drilled, especially under 20 feet of water. I want the hole to have settled down. Once back at the original hole, we fish it for 2-5 minutes. We are looking for a bottom eruption on the vexilar. Ideally, as our lure drops in the water column and nears the bottom, the entire 6 foot zoom explodes with a ‘Christmas Tree’ of lights. Ideally.
If your coming to Devils Lake, you MUST have these 3 lures, without a doubt my 3 go to presentations tipped with minnow heads or spikes!
That is the rush we are looking for, 1st hole Gold Mine very seldom occurs, like I said, it is a numbers game. We fish each hole for 2-5 minutes and I log each hole keeping track of how many fish marks I have in that 2-5 minutes so that I know which holes are worth setting up on and fishing more intensively and which ones are basically dead sea. Here are some of the forms I use to log those holes.
As we zero in on fish and find a depth and contour that they are on, we will lengthen the amount of time we fish each hole and start to drill sets that are closer together and have fewer holes. Usually 3 to 5 holes that are 5 to 10 paces apart. Once we are zeroed in we like to keep the set lines close, 10-15 feet apart.
On the Early Ice this can be in anywhere from 6-10 feet of water out to 15-20 feet of water. My two favorite Early Ice, walking ice spots are 18 and 17 feet deep. We do, however, use the same process later in the year when the big Perch schools are deep and roaming, we just add two or three ‘hole set’ lines to the package so that we can cover a bigger area.
These were found as I was hanging it up for the day and had 1 Walleye in the bucket, Hole #72
I have said before, sometimes you find them on hole 7, sometimes on hole 100, and some days you never DO find them.
I would gladly forego the morning bite and the chance of 5 Walleyes in order to chase Perch and Crappies. How about you, would you sacrifice the morning Golden Hour to set up on a Perch school for the duration of the day? Give us your thoughts in the comments. Are Walleyes or Perch king on The Big Devil during the Hardwater Season?
Look to try our the Perch search on Devils Lake this winter and book your lodging now, its never to late to try your hand at mining for Devils Lake Gold and enjoy a cold beverage and North Dakota’s best Philly sandwich after the chase.
