When I first start ice fishing for perch, I hook the emerald shiner through the base of the tail - almost to the very end. The reason for this, is that the emerald shiner can move vigorously which I purposely want it to do to help attract the perch to my line.

Perch, for the most part, stay close to the bottom so I would be ice fishing such that my sinker is off bottom about one to two inches.

If I don’t get a bite after a while, I jig my line up and down to make sure the shiners continue moving. When I do get a bite, I wait a couple of seconds before setting the hook to allow the perch to take the shiner down to the hook. Perch will almost always take a emerald shiner head first.

As soon as the first perch is caught, I quickly re-bait and drop my line in as soon as I can. Assuming there are others, I want my bait down there before they move away. That’s where the heavy sinker comes in to play – getting the bait down fast.

After catching my first perch though, I hook the emerald shiners in a different manner when I re-bait.

This time, I hook them so that the hook point is directed inside the eye socket (below the eye) and have it come out directly below the eye through the opening between the neck and the gill cover. What this does is that it still allows the shiner to move freely for the most part and stay alive. Now the hook is located at the head-end of the shiner and that allows me to immediately set the hook when I get a bite. One drawback with this is that if you wait too long before setting the hook, there’s a chance that the hook may be swallowed.

Emerald Shiners can be hooked through the lips or through the back as well. I’ve also hooked them through both eye sockets at once.

Now when I catch another perch while ice fishing, to be quick I try to remove the hook with the shiner still on, and quickly drop it back down the hole. If there’s no action, even after jigging the shiner, I’ll re-bait.

Sometimes what I’ll do if the action slows down, is, I’ll take an extra spool of monofilament line and tie three live perch together through the mouth and gills covers and make a small loose loop so that they have some freedom to move. Also to the loop, I add four or five one ounce sinkers. I send them down to the bottom from another hole located two and a half to three feet away from the hole I’m fishing from. Then I tie the spool end of the line to something to make the line tight but the sinkers must remain on bottom. The objective here is that hopefully other perch will come around to check-out the tied ones and hopefully take my offering.

There are times where you may steadily catch perch after perch because you were fortunate to find a large school that stays put. Most of the time though, it’s a scenario where there are small pods of maybe two to five fish that are continuously on the move.

Next time, the concluding facts on ice fishing for perch.

Good luck out there,
Claudio