Icin' Perch Patience Gets Results
by Derek Johnston

There are many issues with lake Mille Lacs these days one including the low Perch population. and the lake starting to see a decline last year. This may possibly be due to a natural downward cycle. This definitely doesn't mean you can't still catch a nice batch of Mille Lacs Perch. There are a few tactics I like to use in times of low fish populations. Last year we learned to be more patient than I normally like to be. Run and gun when searching for Mille Lacs Perch is a great strategy I usually employ.

I was out one day last year with a client from Florida during the first week of good solid ice. We went out and searched a few spots that typically hold Perch. We had little success in finding good schools andnumbers of bigger eating size Perch as most anglers had trouble with.

When we scanned spots through the ice with my Vexilar FL-18, we found Perch hugging tight to the bottom with the zoom feature on the FL-18. We caught small 3-5 inch Perch and proceeded to keep moving looking for bigger perch. Typically I won't spend more than 15-20 minutes on negative smaller schools of fish.

We kept contacting these smaller fish until later in the afternoon. We found some nice fish feeding on a transition along a rock edge that gradually leads to a deeper soft bottom. We caught two fish right away, nice 10 inch fish and then it died and the locator went blank. After contacting fish and proving you are sitting on better sized fish, always punch 10-15 more holes in radius around the spot you're fishing to connect with roaming fish and fish that may be getting spooked from your current hole.

We fish the extra holes we punch and there was nothing. I waited for 20 more minutes and told my client to get ready to move. My client was getting tired and wanted to rest and fish this spot some more. I kept moving from hole to hole convinced that this school had moved on. Big Jumbo's can easily get spooked and move on.

My client then yelled he had fish move in on his locator. He jerked his rod and began reeling up a nice fat jumbo Perch. I then marked fish in a nearby hole next to his and I pulled a nice fat one as well. It by no means was a steady bite or a bite that I would normally have sat out on. Only a couple fish here and there, but most important my client was catching nice fat fish and was happy.

Most of these fish were very shy and needed a little coaxing. We took most of our fish with Angel eye spoons tipped with raw chicken skin. Raw chicken skin is an old favorite of mine for big Jumbo Perch. Its oily,its tough and it gives off great action. I cut pieces into small strips and tip them onto the Angel Eye spoons.

We had to wait for more fish to come through and we noticed even in holes that we didn't mark fish, if we worked them with our spoons long enough, we could bring biters in and get them to bite. I do think the bait and spoon also had a major factor with these fish.

We ended up fishing that spot for 5 hours and caught over 40 fish with 15 of them being nice eaters. I have always been a run and gun angler when trying to contact fish, but this day I learned I didn't need to have fish on the locator to prove to me I was going to catch fish. A little extra patience can go along ways. Till next time see you on the ice.

Derek Johnston
Mille Lacs Area Guide Service
http://fishingminnesota.com/millelacsguide/

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