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Jason Mithchell’s search strategies for late-ice jumbo perch
> What I find amazing about targeting perch through the ice is just how different ecosystems and forage bases can create extremely different patterns. Locations on Mille Lacs Lake will vary greatly from Lake Winnie. Saginaw Bay will be completely different from Devils Lake.
> Perch that are keying on shiners and crayfish act differently from fish that are using blood worms or freshwater shrimp as a primary forage. ...fish that are keying on minnows or crayfish are often more aggressive than fish living off invertebrates like scuds and bug larvae.
> Breaking down basins and large flats is often about making big moves until you find some signs of life and then making small moves to catch fish. This is a mistake that many anglers make, they get bogged down with drilling a lot of holes but drilling their holes too close together on foot.
> When you are on a large piece of structure, use your ATV, snowmobile, or vehicle to make those big moves. Don’t plop on a location, unload all your gear, and proceed to tear apart the lake within a hundred yards of you when in search mode unless you are extremely lucky.
> My best strategy for finding fish is making big moves, often traveling 200-300 yards between holes and spending more time in a hole, perhaps 10-15 minutes. By spreading your holes and settling into your holes longer, you also give fish a little bit of time to wander underneath you if you are in a productive area. This style allows you to break down bigger pieces of water and allows you to cover miles of water over the course of the day when you are starting from scratch.
> Once we zero in on a general area...drill a grid through an area where you can aggressively move from hole to hole and contact fish. This is where the small moves catch fish. Small moves or drilling out a small area is terrible for finding fish on a big lake but is the very best way to produce fish once you find them.
> On some fisheries, perch will school in a column where they stack up on top of each other and move very fast. These vertical schools are typically very aggressive fish and these fish will often climb much higher in the water column.
> There are also times where perch will seldom stack up vertically and instead school up where the fish swim side by side and you seldom have more than 3 fish on the Vexilar at one time. These horizontal schooling fish are often less aggressive and sprawl out over a larger area.
> Generally, if you can get fish to stack up on top of each other and get multiple fish below you...these fish are much easier to catch.
> If you are dealing with perch that are sprawled out over a general area, you can sit over one hole and just wait for these waves of fish to pass underneath. If you get a school of fish to pass by every 10 to 20 minutes, you can add them up to a great day.
> When fish are traveling fast in a column, you often need to be much more aggressive and land on them for short periods of time...windows are going to be intense. You might only keep these fish under you for 10 minutes at a time before you lose them but if you get 2 or 3 cracks at these fish in a day, you can tally several fish in a short amount of time.
Keep reading the full Virtual Angling write-up here.
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by running around with a 3-person team to stay on the fish. One person drilling, one person scanning with FFS, and one person doing the catching...taking turns of course. What a riot!
Early-spring walleye locations and techniques 
