Late ice is welcomed in the North, with thaws allowing anglers to move freely around the ice, enjoying mild temperatures. The worst is behind us now as the long grip of winter’s subzero temperatures is slipping away. We still need relatively cold temperatures to ensure that the thick sheet of ice on northern lakes holds out. But this is when anglers can enjoy milder weather while on the quest for late-ice jumbos.

Be advised: Winter weather isn’t over yet. I have had to shovel snow off docks on the Minnesota May walleye opener. However, the days are longer, and ice is as thick as it will get, allowing us to enjoy warmer outside weather during the late-ice season. But water running down the holes and through the many forming cracks flushes fresh water into the stale shallows, luring and creating monster schools of big, fat, jumbo perch.

Where are they going

As the angle of the sun increases and the days become longer, perch instinct takes over, telling them to move toward shallower weed flats where they will find weed stalks or stubble to soon stick their eggs to. Following ice-out on reservoirs and rivers, perch will use willows and brush to get the job done.

Before I drill out an area on my quest for jumbo perch, I highlight the weed beds or food shelves on my Humminbird LakeMaster maps. This simple tool will highlight these areas on my Humminbird XPLORE, showng me all available areas that fall into these depth contours. I rank the best-looking areas on my highlighted map to begin RAZRing holes.

Some weed beds on large bodies of water are larger than farms—a thousand or more acres. Break weed beds up into three areas: outer, middle and inner areas. RAZR your holes 100 feet apart through these areas, then micro drill key areas after you find the jumbos. You could drop a MEGA Live 2 downrod and scan for swimming fish up to 100 feet away, or fish through drilled holes. It only takes one jumbo caught to give up the pod of jumbo perch.

Bro Pro Tip: I power my Humminbird XPLORE—MEGA Live 2 with a 12-volt ,30-amp-hour battery from Amped Outdoors. This will run my graph from morning until night with full brightness.

Search spoons

When covering water to locate schools of jumbos, I usually start with a 1/8- to 1/4-ounce Northland Thumper Spoon. This spoon is thin-stamped brass, allowing it to tumble to the side; when jigged, it will somersault and roll down. Wonderbread, gold or sneeze are my first choices as search colors. And don’t forget the three basic food groups of jumbos: minnows, maggots and wax worms! I drop the 1/4-ounce first, since I am looking for larger perch to attack it. Try the 1/8-ounce under cold front conditions or when fishing a known finicky bite.

On deeper weed lines, try a Tungsten Slim Spoon for a faster fall and slender profile. I use a 28-inch St. Croix Custom Ice Perch Eye Spoon rod and a SEVIIN GS 750 reel with 5-pound-test Sunline FC Sniper fluorocarbon line and a small size 8 Gamakatsu Snap Swivel. This keeps your line from spinning and coiling, and the fish are not spooked by the swivel. Sometimes, the swivel/leader protects your line from a northern pike bite-off.

Find and set

You just caught a jumbo. Now it’s time to find out how big the school of perch is. Make a small grid of holes within a 100-foot span—no more than a dozen evenly spaced in a square. Spoon-jigging catches the active ones, but inactive ones are big, too. I set up deadsticks with a dropshot Gamakatsu red hook 15 inches above the dropper, baited with a dorsal-hooked fathead. Set these rods up in an I Fish Pro tip-up. While I’m jigging, I watch for my jumbo mouse traps to set off. Some days, the jigged spoon out-fishes the deadstick. Other days, the deadstick catches more and bigger jumbo perch. Either way, use the extra lines allowed in each state or province.

Jumbo perch will grab the fathead minnow and pull until they hook themselves. Other species of fish, such as walleyes, tend to drop the bait if they feel resistance.

Bro Pro Tip: I carry two different RAZR augers in my Otter ATV Monster Box. First, a 6-inch RAZR Synthetic Ultra Lite for drilling large numbers of holes while spoon-search fishing for jumbos. Then, an 8-inch RAZR if I’m using bigger holes for my MEGA Live 2 forward viewing transducer. The drills switch out in seconds on my hammer drill.

Cold weather reset button

Many times on late ice, air temperatures can be above 30 degrees, but Mother Nature can throw a wrench into your fishing plans in a hurry: Such as a balmy, 50-degree set of days with water running down the holes and anglers concerned about an early ice-out…and then subzero cold fronts roll in. When the weather hits the reset button and throws a big arctic freeze into your late-ice trip, just remember that perch are simple creatures. They tend to backtrack to deeper flats adjacent to spring weed beds—usually mud flats down the break with a reasonable distance of less than a mile. The retreating jumbos are still hungry and will bite on spoons and deadstick baits. Downsize spoons to 1/8-ounce tungsten with pre-rigged plastics such as bloodworm or mayfly imitations tipped with a single maggot or wax worm.

The barometer dictates the bite any given day. On the ice, even during a cold front, the tiniest rise—even a tenth—will spark a late-ice bite and raise activity levels. One of the best parts about late ice is that we get longer and brighter days, which is great because perch have poor vision and cannot see well in low-light conditions.

For more insight and tips for fishing throughout the year, check out the articles in every issue of MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.