Perch Fishing for Dummies

[BSF]

I thought that this was an interesting video on YouTube. Hope the link works. Enjoy 

https://youtu.be/bYrEwhhDKDw

[SkunkedAgain]

Thanks that was interesting.... Later J

[RockyRaab2]

Very instructive. The number of times fish mouth and reject a bait undetected was eyebrow-raising.

[Springbuck1]

Very instructive. The number of times fish mouth and reject a bait undetected was eyebrow-raising.

Watching underwater camera footage on YouTube  15 years ago, basically taught me how to ice-fish.  I think it's really valuable. 

It taught me exactly how dumb and befuddled cold-blooded creatures' brains can be, watching them bump into stuff, miss it, knock it around with their noses and miss it repeatedly.

Taught me exactly what a 'hit' looks like and why bite detection is a whole nuther level through the ice.  That thing where they come up, sip it in and don't move?  Turned out I was setting the hook a lot probably when they spit it out! 

It demo'd for me how truly stupid most lures and jigging techniques look, just going "boing, boing, boing", and how attracted they are to movement, then suspicious of unnnatural movement. 

How competitive they are, once they commit, and how they all gather round and stare at your jig, daring eachother to bite it, then dogpile it once one does.  I remember watching six or seven perch staring down a jig/worm combo, then when one finally tries a taste, suddenly all the others want to fight him for it. 

It's all very interesting.

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The one thing on the video, was he starts out saying that finding them is paramount, then doesn't tell us how, just to look and move!

That's always the hardest part! You can't catch fish where they aren't.

[RockyRaab2]

That's because he doesn't know how to find them, either. I doubt anybody does.

[fishnate]

Perch hang out on flats in winter, at least I've never found them elsewhere. A flat isn't necessarily perfectly horizontal, but it can't have much slope. In Utah, perch are typically found on flats from 20' to 60', sometimes deeper. The obvious exceptions are Mantua, Willard and Utah Lake where they dont have access to those depths. The tough part is finding exactly where on the flat the perch might be because perch roam a lot. If you can find some structure like a weed edge, scattered rock, a shrub or a sudden depth change odds are those areas will attract perch at some point during the day because those spots produce insects, crayfish and minnows. Hope that helps some.