Mobilize For Yellow Perch

Mobilize For Yellow Perch

From: Chip Leer

Yellow perch are often quick to answer the dinner bell during the winter. Work a Forage Minnow Spoon in a Silver Shiner or Gold Perch pattern under the ice and you’re apt to have a school form below the hole in no time. In clear, winter water perch can see a good distance, and their curiosity kicks into overdrive when something that looks a lot like a wounded baitfish starts dancing nearby.

But that doesn’t mean you can drill a hole just anywhere and expect success. You have to find the fish first, and when you do, it might take some hole-hopping to stay on them. And that requires an angler to stay mobile.

A small spoon box and a bait puck full of maggots in your pocket; a 3- or 4-foot rod in one hand and a sonar unit in the other, and you’re set to put boots on the ice. Why the extra-long stick? The benefits are many. First, it simplifies run-and-gun, stand-up style fishing by allowing you to keep the rod tip close to the ice, negating the wind’s ill effects on the light line. It also provides a more solid hookset and better control over those heavyset jumbos—or the incidental walleye—in deeper water.

There are efficiency advantages, too. With a 4-foot rod in the grasp of a raised hand, you can effectively fish about 12 feet of the water column without having to touch the reel handle.

Northland’s team of professional anglers had all this in mind when developing the Fire-Tip line of ice rods. Five rods, ranging from 36 to 48 inches in actions from ultra-light to medium-heavy, cross the spectrum from panfish to lake trout.

An extended stick’s length is also a drawback during transport and storage. Pro staffers worked around this by making each of the carbon graphite blanks a two-piece, complete with its own protective sleeve.

A long rod makes stand-up fishing more efficient and productive. Swap your 2-footer for one twice as long and start catching more fish today.