It was still dark, with temperatures hovering around 7 degrees above zero, when a group of us met at a landing near Wabasha, Minn. We were slipping on insulated bibs and thrusting feet into boots by the headlights of our cars.

Below us at the landing were two large aluminum airboats that we dragged our equipment to for loading. The 19-foot jon boats had huge air motors mounted on the back and were going to take us to the backwaters of the Mississippi River to fish for perch.

There were seven of us in our group. Tong Vang and his nephew Connoy Vang, brothers Jessie and Rob Day, Tony Lissick, and Doug Hurd—all from Minnesota’s Twin Cities—and this writer from Hudson, Wis. Captain Vince Moldenhauer of Onalaska, Wis. is the owner of Great River Outdoors and was our guide for the day, along with his friend Jordan Sluekiger of Alma, Wis. Vince has been guiding ice fishermen on the backwaters of the Mississippi River for more than three years.

Once we stored our equipment and took our seats, the motors roared into life and the airboats slid off the landing onto a small frozen river. Racing across the ice, bare trees flashed by on both sides, highlighted in the moonlight. We splashed into open water, skidded over ice, sloshed through another spot of open water, jolted back up on ice, then came to a stop at our fishing spot.

As we got out of the airboats, everyone grabbed rods, buckets and chairs and started for ice holes Vince and Jordan were punching through the 8 to 9 inches of ice we were standing on, over 3 to 4 feet of water.

It had been years since I last ice fished for perch, so I started with what worked for me in the past. I threaded a wax worm on a small chartreuse ice jig below a little float and dropped it down an ice hole.

Our group was spread out across the ice and Vince was dropping off tip-ups in holes that weren’t being used. The tip-ups were L-shaped, wood frames that held an ice rod. They were baited with light pink minnows called Rosie Reds.

The fishing started slowly. Occasionally, someone would pull out a perch from the hole where they were jigging, or when a tip-up flipped over. The wind picked up and it was getting cold. Keeping ice out of the ice holes was a constant effort.

Vince came by to see how I was doing. I told him I didn’t have a strike yet, and he asked to see what I was using. Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a snuff can and, opening the lid, handed me an orange-and-chartreuse tube jig. “Try this,” he told me. It looked like the same tube jigs I use in spring for crappies. “Many times, perch will hit once you have stopped jigging,” Vince added.

I put the tube jig on my line and dropped it down through the ice hole. Fifteen minutes later, a fish hit it lightly enough to bounce the line, but by the time I set the hook, the fish was gone.

A few minutes later, another fish hit my jig. This time, it slammed it as I was lifting the jig off the bottom. My light ice fishing rod bent in half as the fish fought against it. We were fishing in shallow enough water, so all I had to do was just the lift the rod up to see the ice hole fill with yellow. It was a 12-inch, fat, feisty yellow perch.

I learned the lesson on using tube jigs for perch and was about to learn another. I stayed with the same hole for almost an hour and never got another strike. Others in our group were catching fish and I wasn’t. I also was getting cold, so I decided to start moving. Leaving everything at the hole I started at, except my ice rod. I started walking, and about 30 feet away, I found an open ice hole, and dropped my jig through it.

In less than five minutes, I felt a strike. With my light ice rod bouncing, I lifted the fish through the hole. It was another keeper-size perch.

From time to time, I saw a fisherman charging off towards a tip-up which had flipped over. As he reached the tip-up, he grabbed the rod off the wood rack, waited a moment or two, and then rapidly lifted the rod to both set the hook and drag the perch up through the hole, twisting, turning and flipping as it came out.

In the next 20 minutes, I caught three more fish. Just about the time I was ready to move to another ice hole, I got a strike. The wind had died down while the sun was bright in a light blue sky. It was beginning to get warmer.

The call to lunch brought everyone back to the air boat and bratwurst, where bags of chips and bottles of water and Gatorade were passed out. As we were eating, a tip-up or two went over, and someone went slipping and sliding across the ice to get them. The bucket of fish from our group was dumped on the ice and we counted more than 50 fish. It had been a good morning of fishing.

It seemed downright balmy by early-January standards with the warmer weather after lunch, and fishing picked up. Tip-ups were flipping over, and perch were hitting jigs. Everyone was pulling fish through the ice.

It was midafternoon when we began packing up for the return trip back to the landing. Reversing the process from the morning, tip-ups were picked up, ice rods were packed in cases or stuffed into buckets and loaded back into air boats.

Feeling one last strike, the fish felt heavier than the others. The head of the fish was coming out of the ice hole when the hook pulled loose, and the perch disappeared back down the hole. Although it probably was my biggest fish of the day, I couldn’t feel bad. I had caught a bunch of fish, and it was a good day of fishing.

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