While Gary Roach's main focus is on walleyes, he also fishes for pike and panfish during the winter. Photo by Tim Lesmeister

There's not a whole lot of time left in this ice-fishing season to chase walleyes and pike, so pull out all the stops to get as much time on the ice as you can. Some anglers cry and whine about the tough late-season bite for walleyes, but there are plenty more guys who are still catching them because they work a little harder to find them. And the crappies and perch are still biting, too -- maybe better than ever. So quit making excuses, and get out there and catch something.

As far as the late-season walleye bite is concerned, it pays to be on a body of water where there are good numbers of fish. It makes those walleyes easier to find. When you do discover a concentrated school of walleyes on an obscure piece of structure, you can get them to bite. From what I see, the problem is that most anglers aren't fishing where the walleyes are.

To find walleyes in February, I concentrate my search on a sharp dropoff near a deep hole. Those cold-blooded walleyes don't need much to satisfy their hunger in this cold water, but they do eat, and the easier the meal, the more likely they are to take it.

One thing you'll discover when fishing late-ice walleyes is that they bite for short periods at specific times of the day. You might be on top of a school of walleyes and they're giving your bait the cold shoulder -- or should I say, the cold pectoral fin -- and then something activates their feeding response, and they bite.

This feeding period varies little from day to day on any given body of water. Often I can often get a good feel for when the right timing is just by talking to anglers who have been achieving some success. It could be the middle of the day, evening or middle of the night. It may last for only a half-hour to an hour, but you can almost set your watch by it. Be there when it happens. Each body of water varies as to the time of the bite, so what's working on one lake may not be good timing on another.

Pike don't follow the same pattern as the walleyes. They seem to be just as hungry in February as they were in December, and will take a bait at almost any time of day.

The best way to find pike is to realize they're already in transition to the shallow-water regions where they will spawn come April. Setting up for pike in these spots will generate some interest in what you're trying to feed them.

By now, crappies have migrated to the deeper holes and are tightly schooled. Everyone loves to chase crappies right now because when you get onto a big school, you'll get some pretty steady action.

When crappies do move, it's mostly in a vertical line, because the light penetration drives their forage base up or down in the water column. I must admit, I like the night bite when the fish are suspended high and spread out a little more.

Perch are easy to pattern any time in the winter. Get out early in the morning and fish the tops of the reefs and sunken islands. As the day progresses, those fish will move out to the edges of that structure.

The key to getting into a good late-season perch bite is to find spots that haven't been pounded by other anglers. Those "community spots" that have big cities of stationary and portable shelters all over them will provide much less action than the spots where the perch have remained relatively untouched. Of course, this makes perfect sense, but how do you find these spots?