What a day! It is a balmy 4 degrees celsius, about 40 degrees fahrenheit, and we are walking out to fish for jumbo Perch on the North Channel of the St. Mary’s River in beautiful Northern Ontario.

I am accompanied today with my Web Maestro, Mitch Larouche, and we are set up for the day to get some jumbos! We have brought along Shiner minnows, in medium size, and Wax worms for the finicky fish.

We drilled our holes, five, four for us, one for the fish finder, just a tip. On two of the rods we used small “Teardrop” jigs, in Hot Orange and Chartreuse, baited with Wax worms. The other two rods got attractor spoons, smaller Toronto spoon and Little Cleo in Hammered, Silver/Blue finish, 1/4 ounce. The rods with attractor spoons got Shiner minnows.

Once the Eagle Fish Finder got turned on, we marked fish. Schools and schools of perch it appeared, few large fish,(but we did pick up a few over the day). Our rods went into the water with an overall depth of 13 feet and we started jigging. We set up our rods at an agreed four level intervals, 13 feet divided by 4 rods, every 3.5 feet or thereabouts, starting from bottom. We do this to see at what depth the fish are travelling, but also to not miss out on any depth at the beginning of the day. Not long into this we got our first hits on not one, but two of our rods! We pulled up a nice jumbo, turned out to be second biggest of the day at about 12 inches and we were at it!

The day, weather wise was amazing! It was as sunny as you could imagine. I gave up on jigging and went for the “ice fisherman’s tan”, a tan/burn that you get from the top of your turtleneck collar to the bottom of your cap/toque/helmet. It usually includes the white spot around your glasses/goggles because you had to wear them!. We already had more than a dozen jumbos in the pail and dinner was confirmed. As Mitch continued to work hard, and I intermittently assisted, we brought up enough perch that we started letting them go back. One thing about ice fishing for perch is that when you bring them up from depths of 30 feet or more, you pretty much have to keep them, as they will not survive if you put them back down the hole.

We changed up the tackle to include Russian Hooks, Other Teardrops, Crippled Herrings, and others and our lines seem to produce the same amount of fish. The lines rigged with the larger Shiners got the larger fish, but the small spoons and jigs with the Wax worms, produced a lot of the fish needed for the feast.

We got out late and left early and still got a pailful, I got the tan/burn? and Mitch got the majority of the fish. Does not matter to me, I get to write the article, he cleans the fish!

Remember to practice Safe and Friendly Fishing,

Kraig Edwards
President/Editor
FishingNorthernOntario.com

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