It’s March 22nd. Late ice. Go-time for big perch. My friend and I are on a small lake with a sleeper population of jumbos. We’re spread out on a 16-foot flat that leads into a spawning bay.
Unfortunately, things are not unfolding as we had anticipated. It’s a grind.
Hole-hopping and cycling through various baits, we sweet-talk the occasional bite from fussy, bottom-hugging perch. Then I have an idea (one I wish I had about two hours ago). On 2-pound test fluorocarbon, I tie a teardrop jig tipped with a wispy, finesse plastic. After banging bottom a couple times and flicking the jig around, my sonar displays a fish slowly approaching. I keep up the ruse. It closes the gap. Then, my noodle rod’s tip dips and soon I have a solid perch topside. The remainder of the outing was less of a slog thanks, once again, to teardrop jigs. This adventure is just one example of an encounter with moody perch, which is our focus here.
Brooding on Moods
Moody perch are hesitant to attack baits, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be coaxed into striking. When perch are bashful biters, it’s typically a tell they’re in a neutral state and not actively feeding.

Yet, perch are nothing if not curious. This is a bit of a double-edge sword for anglers, as a perch’s inquisitiveness may not wane, even when they’re moody. This is what creates the frustrating scenario of perch eagerly approaching baits, appearing like they’re going to eat, but then refusing to strike once they close the gap on the offering.
The good news for anglers able to attract perch, even if fish are moody, is that you have the benefit of working with a captive audience. With luck and perseverance, you can sometimes convert lookers into biters.
What follows are some observations and tactics worth considering when troubleshooting temperamental perch. The strategies aren’t bulletproof, but hopefully they’ll help you trigger a few more bites from uncooperative perch this hard-water season.
Fish Prime Conditions
One strategy for dealing with moody perch is avoiding them altogether. Easier said than done, right? Sort of.
According to Liam Whetter, a skilled ice angler and content creator who calls Lake of the Woods home, choosing to fish perch when they’re likely to be most active helps him put portly jumbos on the ice. Given the choice, he prefers sunny days as perch are most likely to be energetically feeding.

“Perch are extremely sight oriented and hardly use any of their other senses to find food,” Whetter said. “Because perch use their sight more than anything, the brightest days are sometimes the best.”
Another of Whetter’s strategies is fishing the bookends of the day. He’s often rewarded with steady action following sunrise, as this time of day gives perch their first feeding opportunity since nightfall. On the flip-side, a good bite is common prior to dusk when perch look to fill their bellies with bedtime snacks before light wanes.
“You can use the brightness of a day as a clue to what body of water to fish, as well,” Whetter said. “If it’s a bright day you can fish any body of water you’d like, but on the darker days you should gravitate towards clearer water.”
The Predator Factor
Whetter also cautions anglers not to draw assumptions too quickly that perch are moody and inactive. Sometimes they’re just trying to avoid becoming dinner.
“If you’re fishing in waters with lake trout, northern pike and walleyes, sometimes you’ll be on a fantastic bite that will stop completely,” Whetter said. “This is usually because there’s a big predator on the prowl, and the perch drop their belly to the bottom and refuse to come up.”

One of Whetter’s strategies (and arguably the most fun), is trying to catch the predator, provided it’s legal to do so and you have the proper equipment. After tasting hooks and being caught, a lake trout, pike or walleye won’t be interested in feeding again for a while. Following this, it doesn’t take long for perch to get active and start biting again.
Another option is waiting for the predator to move on. No sense twiddling thumbs, though, so Whetter often downsizes and drops a crappie finesse jig an inch off the bottom right on the perch’s nose to try and coax bites.
Wait ’em Out
Hard-core ice angler, Dave Chong, has logged countless hours chasing jumbo perch. Sight-fishing Lake Simcoe’s shallow waters has let him study perch behavior and identify some patterns.
“What I found was there seemed to be a timing thing,” Chong said, reflecting on his experiences last winter with inactive perch. “It varied every day, but there would be a period when the bigger fish would be more aggressive and eat. I think when they’re in that real negative mood, you’re not going to get that many of them until that switch is flicked.”

If you’ve found big perch and have the time, staying put and waiting for the bite to fire is a tactic worth considering. It goes against the run-and-gun mentality of many modern ice fishing strategies, but it can be effective. Just keep quiet over skinny water, advises Chong.
“There’s no shortage of people on Lake Simcoe, and I’ve seen someone drill a hole and then the perch all take off,” Chong said. “When they’re shallow they’re naturally more spooky. Try and stay as quiet as possible.”
Flicking the Switch
It’s hard to know all of the variables causing perch to snap out of their fussy moods. Similar to Whetter, I’ve noticed sunshine is a factor. Even micro weather scenarios where pockets of sunshine creep through on overcast days can prompt perch to go on the chew.
Sometimes you can get lucky, too, and crack the code on what presentation perch can’t resist. For instance, I’ve sight-fished huge schools comprised of all sizes of perch and watched small and averaged-size fish attack my bait with gusto, while larger perch played aloof. Then, after changing a lure, adjusting the presentation’s depth or jigging cadence, a jumbo would suddenly skyrocket over and smash the presentation. A moody, choosy fish just waiting for the perfect moment. The switch getting flicked, I suppose.
I share this example because moody fish can be triggered by certain presentations. Figuring out what’s the secret is the challenge, and as you’d expect, tactics can run the gamut from big and aggressive to downsized, finesse offerings. Here are a few worth trying.
An Argument for Upsizing
Don’t make the mistake of defaulting to finesse presentations. Big jumbo perch can be deceiving. They’ll ignore small baits, but drop a big lure down the hole and they see red and attack.

One February years ago I was hole-hopping with a Rapala Jigging Shad Rap, hoping to bump into some afternoon walleyes. I struck out on walleyes until dusk, but in the meantime I put several big perch on the ice — and these fish absolutely T-boned the lure. A 2¼-inch Williams Ice Jig is another bait I’ve used with good results to tempt big perch.
Upsizing is one of Chong’s strategies when fishing mixed-size schools of perch in a neutral mood. Jigging a 3-inch McGathy’s Simcoe Slayer can prompt a feeding response from large perch, while simultaneously avoiding interest from smaller fish, he mentioned.
Whetter also has good results with big baits for perch. On lakes home to both perch and walleye, he finds the two species often set up close together. Perch are generally positioned just up a few feet shallower on the piece of structure than the walleye, but he said the species also intermingle.
“Almost all of my biggest perch have come [when] targeting walleye with small Rapala Jigging Raps in size 5 and Snap Raps in size 6, or 13 Fishing Flash Bang jigging spoons,” Whetter said. “These techniques are great when the perch are actively feeding and in an ag-gressive mood.”
Go Erratic
Using a bait with an evasive action is another way to shake moody perch out of a stupor. Erratic movement portrays panic and vulnerability. It also appeals to a perch’s curiosity.
High-action spoons work well. On more than one occasion, using an erratic, wide wobbling spoon, such as a VMC Tingler, has riled up jumbos and helped me enjoy steady fishing action.
The sudden darting of a Jigging Rap or other gliding minnow bait is also effective. The sideways hop of a tube jig snapped off bottom another example. A falling teardrop jig can also kick and shimmy with more of an offbeat pattern than a plain, horizontal jig, and be just the ticket some days.
Let It Lie
Joel Nelson, an ice fishing expert and angling educator from Minnesota, offers another strategy for triggering temperamental perch — soak a minnow on bottom. Here, he explains how he used the approach on Devils Lake in 15 to 18 feet fishing near the edge of the Golden Highway.

“I’ve encountered perch bites where finding the key to unlock them was critical to triggering strikes, and this happened on Devils Lake,” he said. “We were seeing fish all over on the camera, but the only way we could get them to eat was leaving a plain jig hooked with a live minnow on bottom. If you left that minnow struggling on bottom on slack line, the perch came unglued. But, if you tight-lined in order to feel bite it wasn’t natural enough and they wouldn’t touch it. We needed the camera to see the bite.”
Nelson found tail-hooking a fathead produced the best bite response from perch. As the minnow struggled to swim up and away from the 1/8-ounce jig resting on the bottom, perch closed in for the kill.
More Live Bait & Scent Offerings
There’s certainly something to be said about the power of live bait for triggering strikes from moody perch. Maggots tipped on dainty ice jigs are tough to beat when perch want nothing to do with big presentations.
Another simple but proven presentation is a fresh minnow head on a jig, like a Custom Jigs & Spins Ratfinkee jig. Its compact size combined with fresh meat makes it particularly good when hosting beginners learning the finer elements of finessing bites from choosy fish.

If you don’t have live bait, scented products can save your bacon. Last March, my kids and I faced painfully uncooperative perch. Eventually, I figured out we could beguile perch by cutting off part of a Berkley MaxScent Flatnose Minnow’s tail and threading it on a tungsten ice jig. Poof the soft bottom with the jig a couple times and then soak the jig for a while. Sometimes a perch would come over, sniff and then hit. Other fish required more cat-and-mouse maneuvers and, similar to Nelson’s method, some preferred the bait laying on the floor.
What’s on the Menu?
Using a bait capable of mimicking the food de jour can be a skeleton key for unlocking moody perch. I’ve seen this play out many times in scenarios involving chironomid larva, freshwater shrimp, crayfish and various other bugs. When you catch a perch, pay close attention to anything it spits up and tailor your presentation accordingly.
Also make sure your tackle collection has a good assortment of profiled baits. I’ve been saved before by the Berkley PowerBait Power Nymph and Northland Impulse Bloodworm. I foresee Z-Man’s new durable, buoyant Micro Finesse LarvaZ will be a key player, as well.
Moody perch can be maddening. Hopefully, though, these strategies help improve your success rate this winter when up against choosy, selective fish.
— Tim Allard of Ottawa, Ontario, is a hard-water expert and author-photographer of the multi-award winning book, “Ice Fishing: The Ultimate Guide.”
