When The Perch Bite Goes South
Walleyes Will Take A Pounding!
Anyone who has read this report for any amount of time during the winter months will know that I try to dedicate as much of my winter time on the ice chasing Perch. Unfortunately, adding guiding to the list of hats I wear, results are necessary. When the Perch bites get real tough, we switch to chasing Walleyes in order to keep our clients on fish.
This same scenario kind of occurred two years ago and we spent a lot of time chasing Walleyes then as well. Last year, we were able to continue to chase Perch throughout the winter as the Perch bite remained at least viable for most of the year.
A year ago, we didn’t have two to four feet of snow on the ice either and it is becoming painfully apparent that the excess snow cover is having a very negative effect on the Perch bite. As biology will slowly take over and those females with eggs will start to feed, we will see the Perch bite pick up again. A short, mid-winter thaw wouldn’t hurt matters either; we aren’t going to hold our breath on that one though.
So, every few days we will dabble in Perch searches but probably will be targeting Walleyes for the majority of our guide days.
Chasing Walleyes requires much more obnoxious lures than the subtle Perch stuff. We are enticing the walleyes with a variety of lures but two that we keep going back to and keep having success with are both Pink;
- Pink and White Buck Shots
- Pink and White VMC UV
Pictures like this are still achievable and all day grinds on Perch areas can be very productive. The majority of the Perch right now are not being caught on the big stuff anymore though. Those bigger, active lures tipped with a minnow head that we WERE getting Perch on early in the year are now just chasing them away. If you are going to go out there in the deep and chase these striped yo-yo’s, you gotta downsize. Tungsten adn very small spoons tipped with:
- Spikes
- Wax Worms
- Full/Small Minnows
We have run into some true jumbo Perch lately when we are fishing for Walleyes in 9-15 feet of water as well, just not going to run into great numbers.
Depths
Walleyes– Early and Late in the day we are targeting structure and sharp cuts in the contours. Target depth for these times are 7-15 feet of water and need to be adjacent to deeper water. During the day, go super shallow. Those 3-5 foot fish will bite throughout the day. Those hits can be absolutely vicious.
Perch– In a word:
DEEP!
Targeting Perch right now and wanting big numbers one has to go out into those 30+ foot areas and the deep basins.
Good Luck out there!
