The combination of a tiny jig suspended slightly below a flash lure with the hook removed from the lure gets perch biting when many other things won’t. I’ve called this the “greatest perch combo of all time,” and I still believe it. Many of you will too if you’ll give this a try. Thousands and thousands already have since I began talking about this rigging almost 20 years ago.

The advantages of dropper rigging are many, with perhaps the primary emphasis, in this regard, being the ability of the rig to fish shallow or deep quickly and yet attract and trigger reluctant fish, fish put down by the weather, or fish that have been worked over by anglers using more standard methods.

The rig tends to work better deeper than shallower, however. Yet, I’ve made big catches with the combo on shallow sandflats in gin-clear lakes and reservoirs just after ice-up, the flats being not more than 4 to 8 feet deep. Those are hot fish, though—perch up shallow with a determination to feed.

The sandflat pattern, by the way, is a sturdy one, overlooked by most anglers. Usually takes a fair amount of time to get on groups of fish, but once you do, you make up for search time.

The fastest way to search shallow flats these days is with an underwater camera like the Nature Vision Aqua Vu. One man drills and drops; that is, drills about 10 holes in rapid succession in a calculated way, then drops the auger, backtracks to get the camera, and moves with the camera from hole to hole, looking for perch. Plup, down goes the camera for a quick look. No perch here. No perch there. A fish or two here. Lots of fish there. Meanwhile, the other angler follows dutifully along, quickly dropping down into any hole that has perch. The routine also works without a buddy, just takes longer to execute.

Perch on shallow flats, by the way, usually are focused on feeding right on or just above the bottom. Drop the search lure, lift it slightly, so the jig’s just on the bottom. Then tickle the rod tip (shake it) to get the jig to dance on the bottom. That often does it.

Most of you know that perch spend considerable time in deeper water during winter. One more shallow pattern’s worth noting, though, that being that some perch often relate to the remaining weedgrowth in shallower bays. They’re there to feed on young-of-the-year panfish, usually bluegills and crappies, but they eat tiny perch, too. The lush weedgrowth that hides these tiny panfish all summer has thinned enough by winter to allow perch to forage easily on shallow weedflats. Most of this fishing is in water from about 6 to 15 feet deep.

In shallower water, the flash lure part of the combo may sometimes be too much to get perch to go. Then just drop down a plain jig dressed with four or five maggots packed tightly on the hook. (A jig packed with maggots looks sort of just enough like almost everything a perch might like to bite, from a tiny minnow or larval fish, to an insect nymph, or even a large zooplankton like the Daphnia.) That’s also how the maggots should be placed on the jig when it’s hanging below the flash lure.

The classic flash lure has always been the 1/10-ounce Acme Kastmaster. Works well even in 60 feet of water, so long as you’re using 4-pound line.