Northern pike lately, Found a new spot

I’m pretty new to targeting pike. Really mostly just catch ‘em here and there incidentally. But our Great Outdoors Derby has pushed me to try and figure them out a bit. Getting an over 30” trout or walleye is tough, so I’ve resorted to slumming for pike to get an entry into the top gamefish category. Now I found a consistent spot, the fillets are good, and I’m kinda liking just sitting around waiting for a flag to go up. Don’t have to finesse anything, just put a big bait down and see what happens. Don’t even need to bring my flasher. Seems I’ve stumbled on a pretty good deal.

Using 11” herring for my baits, caught early season at my lake trout lake. Tried to buy some quick strike rigs, but Canadian tire didn’t have any, so I bought some on sale stuff and made my own.

Been doing OK.

The jewelry making ….

9lb

6lb fish on a purchased predator rig
Couple hour outing after work last week

Almost 8lb fish after work today
Co-worker came out to check things out, soon as he show up I catch a fish. Soon as he’s walking away to leave I say, “you know a flags going to pop as soon as you go…”. He turns around to laugh, the words barely out of my mouth, and POP, up goes the flag for the second fish

The second one this evening - 7bs
31” and 32+”

Just as I started packing up, another flag goes up. I’ve been giving these fish a bit of time, when the line is still I wait, once they start taking off again, I set the hook. Too soon, they drop the bait, no fish. I’ve missed a few that way. So I’ve been waiting for the run, and it works. So this time I go over, the line isn’t moving. Nothing. Not a flinch. I wait…. No movement. So I lift the tip up, grab the line, slowly slowly bring it in… no weight, nothing…..must be swimming toward me right?…. keep pulling line, nothing… and eventually, the black Dacron tip up line just ends. No more quick strike rig, no 10” wire leader, nothing. Just a cut line. So did i miss a giant or what?

Go time

The kid and the cat both needed to get right in there once I got home

Next year you will for sure get one in the 30+" gamefish category early and give Dale another run for the big prize. So I guess you would support being able to enter more than one fish over 30" in that category About your quick strike righs...looks great BTW...do you need that ring at the top for the two wire loops or can you just use a snap to secure both loops? The cut line. Maybe you need a bit longer wire for the quick strike rigs? I have a friend who like to fish pike and he usually uses much longer wire leaders. I've seen some of his pike swallow pretty deep and sometimes pretty quickly (hard to tell when they just gulp the bait down or hold and swim for a while). There are quite a few large pike lakes up here ...I may just have to try it one day. How deep of water do you usually set your lines? And are you looking for weed edges and setting you bait to be near the top of the weeds near the edges?

So you may have a point, I can likely get rid of the ring that joins the two leaders, but then it wouldn’t be a ‘unit’ until I snap it onto my leader - don’t know how much it would matter to the fish. And I AM using like 8-10” wire leaders above what’s shown there in the picture, I thought should be fine. But, I am learning and seeing that it is tough like you say to know the difference when they’re taking their time chomping down a big bait, or when they suck it in and go. I think I’ve lost two big ones now because they swallowed my whole setup down and cut me off.

I’m fishing 8-15 feet of water, seems to be some weeds down there only maybe a foot high or so.

It seems crazy dropping foot-long baits down, with all that wire rigging to me, after years of finessing brook trout and such, but I think you’re right, I need to go tow-truck cable heavy on this lake. I think we need a 40”+ category now

Great post.

I always mean to enter the derby but somehow don't get around to it. Had 2 over 30 inch pike this year but was not targeting them - they were incidental. That being said the largest at 34 inches was a great fight as it was on a panfish setup.

Also caught a 27 inch this year that was definitely a first for me. Caught him on a panfish rod but did not actually hook him. He was lasso-ed. Somehow he played with the bait in some manner that caused the line to loop around him behind the gills in a self-tightening lasso. Hooks were not attached to him at all.

Must have missed some monsters. Go longer.

Looks like you’ve got them figured out Drew. I like the DIY rig, it’s convenient to be able to keep specific rigs separate, pre-assembled and ready to go. Nick and I had plans to get out and set some flags for pike in hopes of sneaking in a last minute entry but that March 15th deadline snuck up on us. I think he may be out today trying for some…

Catch any on a rod?

No pike on a rod, I don’t usually try. but I did get a 3 lb largemouth. There was a fish that kept looking at my herring and leaving and coming back again, when I tried keeping an eye on my dead bait with the flasher. So I pulled the herring and dropped a spoon, Wham! 15 feet of water - thats a new one for me through the ice.

Pike are a different creature for sure. I also remember my friend saying that sometimes, the pike just sit in front of the dead bait (and he always used large dead bait) until he walked over to the tip-up. Just that disturbance and maybe the thought of losing an easy meal made the pike bite. Happened too often to be just a coincidence he thought.
I think for me, the set up to catch pike is just such a "coarse" fishing method that I have tended to prefer fishing with more finesse stuff. He targeted pike and I targeted panfish (same lake and within 10s of meters from each other). I also tended to like more action even if smaller fish...it seemed like a good way to figure out where panfish may be too (with pike hanging around, there must be something for them to eat).

Breaking down the rig has it's benefits as well esp since it looks like all you have to do is put two of those short wire leaders with hooks into your snap on the longer leader and you are ready to go.

Hope those monsters are doing okay with the rig in their belly and can grow even bigger for next season (can't wait to see the size of the pike you may be pulling up).

Oh, one thing that has happened before is that I actually out-fished (for pike) the dead-bait set up using smaller live minnows. It really depends on the day. We would be fishing side-by-side and my smaller live minnows on a single hook has out-fished the dead-bait (and maybe more lost bites) and once by at least 5-6 to 1. Whatever reason, the pike on those days decided large dead stuff wasn't as tasty as small living things. But it can be the opposite as well with the dead large bait out-fishing small living minnows.