We ice fished many years growing up and perch were always a challenge. Sometimes you caught them and many times you went home with only bluegill. Perch like to hang out about 1' off the bottom and stay in schools as you mentioned. They spook easy and will not take the bait so easy like bluegill did. Perch are hard to trick into biting as we would use sneaky bobbers and watch as the perch would lifted the bait up instead of chomping it down and taking off. Even a spring bobber would go up instead of down and floating bobbers would start laying on their side in the ice hole which was a cue to "nail em" but even then you missed often.

Since perch were finicky eaters I came to the conclusion that is why I liked eating them so much. As we cleaned the perch the meat would always be fluffy white so healthy looking as well as we love the taste., even the eggs were delicious if they were orange colored.

It was not uncommon for us to catch a 12" perch at 35-40 feet of water and bluegill hardly ever went that far down. We discovered that perch were unique not like other pan fish they had their own characteristics.