Fish Lake Perch Tournament

The morning started early as we headed south towards Fish Lake. It was dark and expectations were uncertain. We arrived, geared up and registered before heading out on the already crowded ice. I knew that our success depended on locating the weed line where perch like to hide out. Though I had never been on a frozen version of Fish Lake before, I was armed with an internet education on perch and a few tricks gleaned through discussions with numerous friends.



Noticing the line of tents and fishermen that ran parallel to the shore line, we concluded that we needed to find a place in the same single file line in order to be on the weed line. I punched a series of holes between 12 and 17 feet deep and after a little sonar and camera work we found a nice weed bed with stacks of perch. Not long after putting lures in the water we had a nice pile of perch.

The fishing started fast and only got faster. After a half hour the action accelerated to an exciting rate. I believe it took that long to create a decent sized school of perch below. The technique was simply to let the small meal worm tipped jig hit the bottom, reel up one full turn, count to three and set the hook.

The amazing part was that very few others in the area were catching anything. Feeling I had to do something to motivate the other fisherman who weren't experiencing the same success I instructed the boys that when they hooked a fish to yell at the top of their lungs, "Fish On!"

In all, Adam and I did very little fishing for ourselves during the morning. It was more like a daddy line-rigging marathon. The repetition went:

Unhook fish

 attach meal worm

take rod with hooked fish from boy

hand newly baited rod to boy

FISH ON!

(Then Repeat)

Not too far into the morning the boy caught a 9.5 inch fish which meant a prize if he could get it to the check in station before anyone else. So I sent him running. 10 minutes later he showed up wearing his new fishing hat. Adams boy went running after catching his 50th fish, and brought back a new camp chair. Once the boys won their prizes we finally got a chance to fish for ourselves.

Perch wasn't the only species we were catching. Throughout the morning the boys landed several rainbow trout. Later in the day we caught a few Splake. The Splake were beautiful fish and a welcome change of pace.

After wearing out their little arms reeling in perch the boys turned their attention to exploring the ice and hunting for food. They found the jackpot at the weigh in station where they were giving away free hot dogs, fried fish and hot chocolate.

The DNR and Cabelas representatives came around handing out jigs and other free stuff. Brian from Cabelas taught us how to use a perch eye as bait. The perch eye worked just as well as the meal worms but it stayed on the hook better and we didn't have to keep replacing it in between fish.

The weather was perfect, the morning was mild and the day was sunny and reached 45 degrees. In fact, I never did wear my coat. Just a long sleeve shirt, a hoody and sun screen. On these warm days my favorite sound in the world is that of popping ice. One series of pops in particular started down the shore line popping louder as it got closer and then moving a couple miles up the shore line continued popping stirring fisherman to react with squeals and cheers. It reminded me of the spectators at a football game doing the wave, just on a much larger scale.

Talking to some of the DNR officials we had heard that there are more than 1,600 registered for the tournament. After calculating our odds of winning a prize in the raffle to be held at the end of the tournament we decided it would be a good idea to get a head start on the drive home.

I weighed in at 23 lbs of perch which I assumed was not enough to win the overall weight category since I spent most of the morning as a support function to the boys and not able to fish for myself. All together we caught about 180 fish. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

The ride home was exciting as we called our wives and had our kids report back on their fishing experience. It was one of our best ice fishing days ever. When we got home we cooked up some of the fish and tucked in for a much needed nap.