Topic: The Best Ice Fishing Lures for Perch (Read 43 times)
previous topic - next topic
It's your post, so post it!
Why It Made the Cut
This bladed jig puts out a ton of vibration and flash, which is ideal for getting perch to bite.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
The original bladed jig on the market, this bait’s unique head shape, hook placement, hook gap, and flickering willow blade make it a great bait for big perch. It hangs horizontally when jigged, the willow blade creating flash, distress vibration, and sound patterns that appeal to jumbo perch.
This flasher jig is great for fishing a whole minnow or larger minnow head. It’s especially effective in areas where there are underwater currents where it can send off a lot of flash and vibration. The hook angle promotes solid hooksets and its stand-up head design is deadly fished on the bottom.
Why It Made the Cut
This tungesten jig is ideal for fishing finesse baits or small live baits.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
It seems every manufacturer is manufacturing tungsten jigs these days. Custom Jigs & Spins have been offering customers tungsten for years now and the baits have beco*e a staple with professional tournament ice anglers and weekend warriors alike. When it co*es to finesse fishing for perch, the Chekai Tungsten gets the job done.I’ve fished them extensively and when a small, tungsten jig is called for to really finesse bait-wary perch, this is my go-to, either tipped with a micro-plastic, waxies, or maggots.
Why It Made the Cut
You can spend more time fishing, and less time rigging with this tungest jig and bloodworm co*bo.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
There are many situations when perch nose down in the mud or soft, weedy bottoms gorging themselves on larval and nymph life, especially emerging bloodworms. These situations call for down-sizing presentations significantly, but you still want to get to the bottom quick, hence the tungsten jig head. “Puffing” the bottom with the bait is a great way to attract feeding perch.
Rather than having to rig up a tungsten jig heads with tiny plastics with numb fingers, Northland makes it easy to grab a pre-rigged bait and start fishing. It’s the perfect marriage of two proven baits—the Impulse Bloodworm soft plastic and the Northland Tungsten Mud Bug Head. Matched with the uniquely-molded jig head, the plastic and head co*bo looks about as close to a bloodworm as anything currently available to ice anglers, perfect for when perch are nosing into the mud for bloodworms and macroinvertebrates and passing on minnows. The jig design has a considerable hook gap, too, for easy hooksets.
Why It Made the Cut
When hopping from hole-to-hole, this small rattle bait is great for searching out the most active perch through the water column.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
When jumbo perch are on an active feed—and it’s a race to make the most of the bite before they quit—it’s hard to beat an Ultra-light Rippin’ Rap for the sheer speed you can fish it from hole-to-hole. With its skinny sides, the bait flutters on the drop, sometimes getting hit before the bait strikes bottom. Featuring a BB rattle system, the bait’s loud and draws fish in from afar. Textured scales and gills with deep-set 3D holographic eyes enhance the bait’s visual appeal. Whether you’re fishing clear or stained water, it simply draws in fish.
Why It Made the Cut
This spoon’s loud rattle calls in fish and triggers a predatory response.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
A recent design change drawing from the vast, long success of the Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon, the Glass Buck-Shot Spoon features a high-pitched glass rattle that fish have never heard before that turns even old, wary and conditioned jumbo perch and walleyes into biters.
The Glass Buck-Shot Spoon features a high pitch glass rattle chamber to play on the perch’s auditory senses. The translucent patterns add to its attractiveness, whether depth and water clarity call for glow or a forage-matching color scheme. Available in three sizes and 10 distinct fish-catching colors.
Why It Made the Cut
This versatile spoon can be used with or without bait and with a Pro Finesse Drop Chain for finicky fish.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
The Slender Spoon can be effectively fished without bait, especially the 1/16-ounce size. As mentioned, it often gets hit on the fall and is great for fishing through suspended pods of perch. All colors are available with nickel or gold back for various water clarity (I personally like gold everywhere). The spoon is also available in glow red for Lake of the Woods and glow blue for the Dakotas, must-have patterns for those waters. Green glow adds to the mix for everywhere else. Tip with waxies, spikes, or a minnow head and you’ve got one deadly bait. Or add a Pro-Finesse Drop Chain and the bait suddenly beco*es a finesse lure that will convert neutral to negative fish, especially when co*bined with a chandelier of waxies or maggots.
Why It Made the Cut
There are countless minnow-profile glide baits on the market today, but the original keeps proving itself as one of the best ice fishing lures for panfish.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
Another must-have bait, over the past 50 years or more the Rapala Jigging Rap has iced literally thousands of fish on hardwater. Now available in sizes suited to perch and other panfish, when it co*es to jigging minnows, there’s no substitute for the original. For jumbo perch, pros and guides are typically opting for the second smallest size in the family—the 3/16-ounce, 1 ½-inch W3 with one #12 treble hook—which swims in tantalizing circles under the ice, especially suited to suspended fish. The bait can be fished mid-depth, bottom bounced, of jigged yo-yo style with spectacular results. Available in 30 patterns, including four new colors including Fruit Punch, Headspin, Glow Pink Squirrel, and Glow Slimy Lime. There are also glow and UV patterns available.
Why It Made the Cut
Simply, when other baits fail to produce through the ice or open water, I turn to the Schuck’s Jigger Minnow. Its dense body falls fast and shows up great on the best ice fishing fish finders. The minnow-shaped body also attracts perch but the dropper dressed with waxies, maggots, a minnow head, or perch eye (where legal) seals the deal. A great option of neutral to negative fish. It also slides effortlessly through weeds, brush, timber, and cribs without snagging, getting to hard-to-reach fish.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
Known to many Midwest anglers as their secret panfish go-to bait, Schuck’s Jig Spoon is another must-have for any ice perch angler. When jumbo perch are neutral to negative, this is the bait that’ll crack the code—specifically, the 1.5-inch, 1/8-ounce Jigger Minnow, although anglers fishing giant perch in deeper waters may want to size up to the 2-inch Jigger Minnow. Especially great for fishing around cribs, brush, weeds, and other structure, the spoon slides vertically through the mess, presenting a waxy, several maggots, minnow head, (or where legal) fish eye, to jumbo perch on the attached dropper and hook chain. Still handmade in the U.S.A., Schuck’s is a small operation but with a handful of diehard followers across the Ice Belt who’d prefer the baits remain a secret. Available in 29 different patterns, including glow.
Why It Made the Cut
This finesse-style bait fishes fast enough to hole-hop and get down to perch fast. The gold or glow body co*binations are visual attractors to the glowing epoxy-dipped treble hook and whatever live bait you have hanging from it.
Key Features
Pros
Cons
Product Overview
Built from tungsten, the CLAM Dropper Spoon is small and co*pact with a short, three-link dropper chain and #14 glowing epoxy treble hook to fool upward-feeding perch. It works great tipped with waxworms, a minnow head, or the eye from a smaller perch (where legal). Drops down to fish fast and allows the angler to actively hole hop to find active fish. The three-link, gold dropper chain has repeatedly proven its merits during cold fronts, bad pressure systems, or when fishing traffic turns perch off.
Forage Base
The first thing you need to figure out is what the predominant perch forage on the water body you’re fishing. Are the perch suspended and feeding on pods of roaming minnows? And what size are those minnows? Or, are the perch nosing into the bottom and feeding on emerging life like bloodworms? It could be they’re doing all of the above and just at different times of the day. Yes, it can be co*plex but with today’s advanced ice electronics, it’s easier to discern this factor.
Water Clarity
A general rule of thumb is to fish brighter colors and glow patterns—and lures that emit sound from rattles or spinner blades—in more turbid waters. In waters that are clear, match-the-hatch patterns beco*e critical to success in a lot of cases where the perch’s vision beco*es more important in locating and eating your bait.
Depth
Depending on whether you’re fishing early, mid-season, or late ice, the depth that you find perch roaming can vary significantly. From shallow, weedy bays and flats, weed-line edges, cribs, to rocky mid-lake humps and drop-offs, you’ll need to match your presentation to how deep you’re fishing—and more importantly, where the fish are holding in the water column. Of course, with today’s ice fishing electronics this is getting a lot easier and quicker to discern. You can even watch the reaction of perch on most ice fish-finders now. Do you want a bait that falls slow in the water column for upward-feeding fish? Or, do you want a bait that quickly races to the bottom to attract bottom-feeders that are here one minute, gone