This is the time of year across the Midwest when some ice-anglers start to finish off the season. In some regions, in some years, Mother Nature sends spring a little early, making for iffy ice conditions. However, when the weather cooperates, this time of year can provide some fantastic ice-fishing opportunities. I just returned from one of those fantastic ice-fishing trips in South Dakota, and from the appearance of ice conditions, there is still a lot of ice-fishing to do in that area.

The areas that hang on to the ice-fishing season the longest are the Dakotas and northern Minnesota, and perch are the favored quarry. The area around Devils Lake in North Dakota, Lake Winnibigoshish in Minnesota, and the northeast corner of South Dakota can provide fast action for jumbo perch in these areas. If this late winter perch chasing sounds like a good idea to you, here’s how you go about it.

We headquartered last week in Webster South Dakota. This area has a bunch of lakes that provide consistent action from perch in the ten to thirteen inch size range, some will run even larger. When you stop at the bait-shop to get your fishing license, ask for suggestions as to where to start fishing. Ask which lakes have been the best lately, productive depths, baits, that sort of thing. Don’t go to the lake and move right in on other anglers. Keep your distance from other anglers and you will have a more pleasant experience.

Some of the lakes we fished in the Webster area have received a lot of fishing pressure in the past few years. The perch are large, but they can also be skittish. This is when you want an auger that cuts quickly. The Jiffy Stealth units that we used made it much easier to find the perch. We simply cut lots of holes in hopes of cutting a few that were over some perch. We never spent more than five minutes at a hole if no fish showed up on the sonar. Usually the fish would hit right away.

Forage Minnow spoons tipped with two Gulp! Maggots were the hot set-up. The same spoons with live larva caught the little perch, but the Forage Minnow/Gulp! took the big ones.

There were times when even the skittish perch could be tricked into biting. We used MarCum LX-3 sonar units to watch for the presence of fish. After taking a couple of perch from a hole, sometimes the next perch would just come up and look at the spoon. Sometimes it would just hold there and look at the spoon, other times it would slowly move away. When this happened, if a Micro Minnow/Gulp! Maggot was quickly sent down there, often the perch would come back and eat. Not always, but enough of the time to make this tactic worthwhile.

Almost wherever you live in the Midwest, there are some ice-fishing opportunities within easy driving distance. Make that drive and find out for yourself just how good the fishing can be right now through a hole in the ice.

For more fish-catching information, visit fishingthemidwest.com