Alan Hintz sounded like a man who had just won the lottery after he caught a potential state-record yellow perch on Devils Lake in North Dakota.
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of fishermen go up to Devils Lake to ice fish for perch each winter,” he said. “Why me? Why was I the one who caught that perch?”
The odds didn’t look good early in the day on March 1 when Hintz joined five of his buddies for a guided trip on the huge natural lake. The fishermen headed into several portable shelters and began jigging for perch.
Midway through the day, Hintz and his brother Dale had only three perch in their bucket and the bite was slow. But Hintz’s guide — Tyler Elshaug of the Perch Patrol Guide Service — tried a different strategy and it paid off big time.
The Hits Start Coming
After spotting fish on his forward-facing sonar in a weedy bay, he moved the portable shelters there. The Hintz brothers resumed fishing while studying the screen of a Vexilar flasher unit.
When a larger mark appeared on the screen, Hintz dropped his jigging spoon tipped with a piece of minnow to the fish. He immediately felt a hit, but it didn’t stay hooked. When he dropped the lure back to the same spot, what Hintz assumed was the same fish hit again. This time it stayed buttoned.
“I thought it was a pike at first,” Hintz said. “My brother just had one break his line and I thought this was another one, or maybe the same fish.”
Nope. After a few minutes of fighting the fish, Hintz looked down in surprise to see the yellow perch of his dreams.
A Dream Becomes Reality
Elshaug took one look at the football-shaped perch and knew they had to get it weighed on certified scales. They headed to Woodland Resort, where Hintz and others in his group were staying, and found that it weighed 2.99 pounds — a potential North Dakota state record.
Hintz has submitted an application and will have to wait four weeks for the North Dakota Fish and Game Department to conduct a routine investigation. If it passes, Hintz’s catch would likely go down in the record books as three pounds, barely surpassing the existing mark of two pounds, 15 ounces, also set at Devils Lake in 1982. (In an attempt to stay consistent with the past record-keeping system, the agency rounds up fish weighed as decimals to the nearest ounce.)
To many, Hintz’s huge perch comes as no surprise. Devils Lake has long been recognized as one of the nation’s best yellow-perch lakes. With an abundance of the freshwater shrimp that perch feed on, they grow fast and fat.
It’s Nice on the Ice
Winter is the time to catch perch. While many anglers farther south are taking the cold-weather months off, ice fishermen on Devils Lake are enjoying their busiest season of the year.
“I’ve only had three days off since Christmas,” Elshaug said. “We’re busier in the winter than we are when we have open water. “Everyone knows that is the time of the year to catch a big perch.”
Elshaug learned at an early age what ice fishing for yellow perch means to Devils Lake. His dad was a local legend, and he got his son into winter fishing at an early age.
Steve “Zippy” Dahl, one of the founders of the Perch Patrol Guide Service, agrees that Devils Lake has a tradition when it comes to ice fish for perch. He and his partners started the business 31 years ago. It is still going strong, with 10 guides taking customers out each winter.
“Our numbers (of perch) are down a bit, but the size of our fish is still impressive,” Dahl said. “We’ve never had so many two-pound perch as we have this winter.”
Attracting Anglers Near and Far
That’s one of the draws that brought Hintz and his friends to Devils Lake. Hintz, who lives in Stevens Point, Wis., is an avid ice angler. A retired computer consultant, he is out fishing every chance he gets in central Wisconsin.
He and his friends target different species by the season. Big yellow perch are the choice in winter, which is why they travel to Devils Lake for a three-day trip each year.
“We target big perch,” Hintz said. “The walleyes are just a bonus. We just don’t have perch this size back where we fish.”
Hintz plans to have his yellow perch mounted, and already has picked out where he’ll display it.
“My wife will have to move one of her paintings, but I don’t think she’ll care,” he said.
