The key to finding the beginning of the basin areas is recognizing where harder gives way to softer bottom. The softer bottom, by the way, usually is clay or marl covered with silt. Super-soft muck doesn’t attract perch for long. The beginning of the basin is a foraging area where I’ve found perch in lake after lake (and reservoirs) that I’ve fished from Montana to Manitoba to Iowa to New York.

But where along the basin edge? That’s not always so easy. Points, for example, don’t particularly impress perch, which don’t seek them as walleyes might. Perch just roam, often in spread-out groups that may cover several hundred yards and include hundreds or even thousands of fish.

These fish, though, aren’t nearly so picky as shallow fish, so it’s really not so difficult to find them if you search systematically. So get a couple buddies, find the basin edge, spread out perpendicular to it—that’s about three abreast—and start popping holes. Drop a bait down, search with electronics, both sonar and an underwater camera, as well as fishing. If you’re fishing, give a spot three minutes or so and move on down the edge.

So much the better if other friends are searching basin areas in other sections of the lake, and you can keep in touch. Once you find an aggregate of fish, usually the word gets out and the troops gather. You’ll have good fishing until you put a dent in the group of fish.

These groups of fish drift along from day to day. It’s not unusual for groups to move 200 yards farther down along a basin edge by the next day. They don’t move much at night, so where you leave them in the evening expect to find them the next morning.

Perch don’t prefer to hold on points, I mentioned a moment ago. Still, as they move through the basin, they move around them as they drift around the basin edge. So points remain a fair place to begin your search. They also gather in the inside pocket where a base of a point turns at shore.

But perch also drift well away from the basin edge, roaming in scattered groups within basin areas. These fish can become difficult to find, particularly when they drop deeper than 60 feet. This often happens, though, and it’s usually the reason perch fishing goes sour during late season. No one can find fish. The muskies ate them all and the world’s coming to an end.

Relax. The fish are still out there. Eventually, they’ll drift back along an edge and everyone will be happy again. In the meantime, look for hard-bottom slashes in basin zones, places where a marl or clay and gravel (or sand) lip rests in deep water. In natural lakes, these are patch areas caused by glacial deposits. In reservoirs, they’re worn humps or mounds that once where farmed hillsides or riverbank mounds. Usually, these areas are slight shallower than the surrounding soft area. In one lake I fish, a portion of basin zone runs about 70 feet deep for a mile in every direction, except for three gradual rises to about 64 feet. The largest of the rises is about a football field long and 30 yards wide. The perch often drift here, always scattered. I usually can scratch a dozen there, enough for dinner, although it may take several hours.

My rule is that you clean what you catch from deep water, or you don’t fish there. Bring perch up and they’re dead—slightly exploded from inside-out by pressure change. Even if they’re four inches long they go home, not onto the ice or back to flounder in the ice hole. Although tiny, they’re an incredibly succulent set of fillets. Saute a couple dozen in butter laced with a little fresh garlic. Just takes a second. Takes a thin Rapala 5-inch fillet knife to do small perch right.