Custom Jigs & Spins’ Slip Dropper is an adjustable search lure that features plastic sleeves at the top and bottom of the spoon, which allows for changing the length of the dropper. I’ve seen HT Enterprises’ Hanger Rig produce well on Devils Lake in North Dakota, and Northland Fishing Tackle entered the search lure market this season with their Buck-Shot Rattle Dropper Spoon.
Swimming lures also make great search lures. The advantage of converting a swimming lure, like the Jigging Rapala and the Nils Master Jigger or Jigging Shad, is that the heavier baits (molded from lead) keep your line taunt to detect light bites, and the heavyweight baits also rocket to the bottom, which allows you to get your bait back down quickly before the school of perch moves. The key to converting these two types of swimming lures into perch search baits is to cut off both tail and nose hooks to prevent the dropper from tangling.
I prefer a mono dropper rather than the chain dropper below swimming lures. Mono droppers tend to track below the belly of the baits, where chain droppers have a tendency to swing over the bait and tangle with the main line. Remove the belly treble and replace it with a single 2-inch dropper line with a #8 single hook, or a #8 treble. Loop knots allow the dropper line and hook to swing freely below the bait. Northland’s Super-Glo Dropper single dropper hook (tied with 12-pound mono) or their Sting’r Hook (rigged with a treble) also work well below swimming lures.
Converting Salmo’s Chubby Darter into a search lure is a good choice, particularly for attracting scattered perch because the large bait creates lots of vibration and flash. Worked aggressively, the combo attracts fish from a long distance. Most times I leave the back treble on the bait for a shot at walleyes or pike that move in and strike the bait. But removing both trebles and adding two droppers produced some interesting results last season. It attracted and held the fish below me, and I also caught several doubles.
Drop-Shotting—Drop-shotting through the ice can be extremely productive, though few anglers do it. Getting a perch to rise up forces them to make a decision to eat or not to eat. More times than not, perch that are willing to rise are willing to eat.
Drop-shotting involves placing a weight at the end of the line, with a hook and bait set some distance above. This keeps the bait a set distance from bottom—basically suspending a bait near bottom where perch tend to roam. By placing the weight on bottom, you have full control of the lure’s working depth, which is effective when fish hold some distance above the bottom, and it also works for calling active perch off bottom.
According to Iowa perch angler Eric Naig, “One of the greatest perch tricks around is stirring up the bottom with your bait. For whatever reason, perch can be completely uninterested in your bait, but stirring up the bottom seems to make them active. Drop-shotting is the perfect rig for stirring up the bottom with a weight, while at the same time keeping your bait above the cloud of sediment where perch can see it.”
