Winnipesaukee White Perch Frenzy

The white perch fishing is starting pick up on Lake Winnipesaukee. It feels good to be through the typical mid-winter struggle that happens every year just prior to these unusually large white perch beginning their pre-spawn ritual of forming bigger schools and feeding aggressively. The last trip out was a scouting mission. There was an area of Lake Winnipesaukee that I have never fished, but always wanted to because it has all the ingredients for superb white perch fishing. It means riding 3+ miles on snowmobile which isn't that far, but when I'm limited to only one day per week to fish for myself, I usual just end up hitting the old familiar haunts. Well, those haunts are becoming familiar to a lot of other anglers too, and the time had come to identify new territory. Using the Navionics web app on my computer at home, I identified a few new areas that I wanted to fish. Then I marked these areas on my Lowrance and on the Navionics app on my iPhone. Accompanied by my friend Josh, we departed the launch and made our way through the many heavy snow drifts and deep snow to the first of many spots I had identified the day before. The weather was about as perfect for catching white perch as I have ever seen. Cloudy with light snow, but not so cold that we had to fish inside the shelter, and almost no wind. We had no idea that we were in for some of the most insane white perch fishing all season. We were fishing basins adjacent to steep breaks. The first three basins produced mediocre results. I made the decision to make another move to a small basin that was about 30' deep and have some lunch after we got there...a big mistake because I was hungry. I got us set up and put the Vexilar in the hole to see nothing. That all changed as soon as I dropped my jig into Winnipesaukee's crystal clear water and the red lines started stacking from the bottom up like dominoes. I had to switch from the 6' zoom to the 12' zoom to see all the fish. We caught jumbos non-stop for three hours. When I say jumbos I'm talking white perch 2 pounds and over. I don't use the term epic very often, but this day warranted it. We couldn't get our jigs back down the holes fast enough. We caught fish so fast, and so consistently, that there wasn't even time to put our gloves on between fish, nor was it necessary to bait our hooks. The fish were so fired up that we were dropping our jigs down with no bait and the frenzied white perch were hitting anything that moved. The result was painfully frozen hands. When the mayhem finally ended we were so frozen that neither of us could use our hands and we had to set up the shelter with heat to thaw out before we made the 4.5 mile ride back to the launch. Last season the go-to jig for white perch was the Epoxy Drop from Clam Pro Tackle. While it is still catching tons of fish, the 1/8 ounce silver tiger Blade Spoon has been really hot this year. Since it is illegal to tip treble hooks with anything while ice fishing in New Hampshire, I clip two of the points off making the treble a single point hook. Tip that hook with a piece of worm or some spikes and I can coax even the most finicky white perch into biting.