I’ve got to agree with Big G. With today’s augers, the extra few minutes it takes to put a weedbed down where there are no weeds is well worth the effort. I like to think of it as putting out decoys for ducks. The weeds become the attractant and, especially where there is no structure on a flat or sand bar, fish will tend to come and check it out. Without them, fish may swim by a distance away without noticing a baited hook or jig. It makes perfect sense to me. I use mine all the time and think they’re great. As someone mentioned earlier, with a camera down there you really get to see how fish positively react to them. Just my opinion though.

We are fishing the 13th through the 15th.

Perch don’t actually spawn until the ice is out. The water temp. needs to be between 45 and 55 degrees so they will usually spawn in 6 feet of water or less which will be the warmest water on the lake. The actual spawning process usually happens at night or early in the moring. Perch are unique in that they need to deposit there eggs, which come out of the female in long coiled strings, on verticle stucture, preferably weeds. In lakes that don’t have weeds, perch will lay there eggs on the bottom of the lake, but the eggs have very little chance of hatching due to being covered in sediment and washing up on shore. This is why some lakes, particularly in the glacial Dakota lakes, have such erratic perch reproduction. During drought years, there is no vegetation resulting in little or no perch reproduction.