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Monster Pike Guide
HARDWATER SPECial 2023 PRO PIKE PLOYS BY GORD PYZER
EXPERT WINTERTIME TECHNIQUES FOR HAULING MORE GIGANTIC NORTHERNS THROUGH THE ICE
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I SPEND AS many days fishing on the ice as I do on a boat in open water. Such is the outdoor life in the Great White North, where I can tiptoe out onto frozen water in mid-November and not put away my auger until mid-April. It’s nothing to spend 75 days each winter drilling holes and setting lines. And for much of that period, I’m fishing for the biggest predators in the lake—giant northern pike. How big? My personal-best so far is a 53-inch beast I caught while filming an episode of In-Fisherman TV with my good friend Doug Stange, the show’s host. The next largest is a 50-incher I tag-teamed with my buddy Bob Izumi while the cameras were rolling for his Real Fishing Show.
All that time spent peering down a hole in the ice, and watching for distant tip-up flags to fly, has taught me some important lessons about »
THE AUTHOR PREPARES TO LIVERELEASE A GIANT PIKE
catching these big fish. For starters, I’ve learned that pike are the most misunderstood fish we pursue during winter. But don’t you just look for weedy areas, then set dead baits under tip-ups? Not by a long shot.
“I’ve always said that we know less about what pike do in the winter than any other time of the year,” says my friend and former colleague John Casselman, now retired as senior research scientist with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources. “It is truly an unknown period of their life cycle. The more we learn about it, the more fascinating it becomes.”
I can certainly attest to that. And as Casselman says, “What pike do in the winter is much more impressive than what they do in the summer.” Here are the other key things I’ve learned over the years to catch more and bigger northerns through the ice.
WATCH THE WEATHER
I always carefully check the weather forecast before deciding which pike lake I’m going to target on any given day, but the reason why may surprise you. It’s not to determine whether I’ll be going fishing—that’s a given—but rather which lake is likely to produce the best action given the forecasted conditions.
Why is the weather so important? When it comes to triggering fish to feed, Casselman explains, nothing is more significant than the amount of light streaming through the ice and snow into the water below. The more light there is, he says, the more it stimulates a fish’s endocrine system, prodding it to eat.
To prove this point, Casselman used a dimmer switch to regulate the light in the lab where he kept captive pike. When he brightened the lights to between 300 and 700 lux— matching the level of light under the ice on a sunny January day—the fish immediately swam up from the bottom of the tank and became active. Conversely, he put the pike to sleep when he turned the lights down. Apparently, the decision to rest, prowl and feed is beyond their control, dictated almost entirely by the amount of light.
So, if the sun will be shining brightly, I always pick a lake where the potential is high to catch the trophy of a lifetime. On the days I caught those giant fish with Stange and Izumi, for example, it was so bright we needed sunglasses to cut the glare. I’ll also choose a bright day to explore a new lake I’ve never fished before. This is especially the case if the lake has dark or stained water, which would otherwise make it tough to ice a big pike on a cloudy day.
When it’s overcast and the light level is less than ideal, on the other hand, I’ll target clear bodies of water. I figure that the clear water, especially if there’s minimal ice and snow on the surface, will enhance any light making its way through. On such days, I’ll also fish for fun on shallow, weedy lakes filled with medium-sized pike that can’t escape to deepwater refuges. It’s all about optimizing the conditions and stacking the odds in your favour.
ON DULL DAYS, FISH FOR PIKE ON LAKES WITH CLEAR WATER
CRANK ’EM IN
I’ve started catching pike the last few years jigging large lipless crankbaits, such as the four-inch Kamooki SmartFish Rainbow Trout (pictured above). I thought the tactic would simply attract the fish to my deadbaits, but I was shocked to catch as many pike on the cranks as my set lines. For this presentation, I use a longer, 42-inch, heavy-action ice rod and reel spooled with 20- to 40-pound Maxima or Sufix 832 braid. A 30-pound test leader fashioned from AWS Surflon Micro Supreme tieable wire complements the set-up perfectly. Just be sure you’re hanging on tight when one of these freshwater gators tries to rip the rod out of your hand.
ON SHIELD LAKES IN THE EARLY SEASON, FISH OVER STRUCTURE NEXT TO THE MAIN-LAKE BASIN
DON’T RUSH TO THE WEEDS
I live on the vast Canadian Shield, where most of the lakes I fish are heavily structured, with countless boulder-strewn points, rock reefs and granite shoals. In the fall, the pike pull out of the weedy bays and coves where they spent the summer and concentrate around these hard-rock features adjacent to the mainlake basin. I call them “bus stops,” because they remind me of the places kids wait to be picked up when they return to school after the summer holidays. In October and November, it’s possible to catch trophy-sized pike on consecutive casts at such locations.
Bus stops appeal to northerns in the fall because they’re primary contact spots for whitefish and ciscoes, the high-protein, soft-rayed forage fish the big toothy critters like to eat. The pike will intercept the dense schools that lay their eggs on the rock rubble and stones, and ambush the ones that hang around into winter after spawning.
Why then do so many pike anglers rush into weedy bays to set tip-ups as soon as the lake freezes over? I mean, some of the best pike action of the entire open-water season just took place at the main-lake bus stops, so why not return to them instead? I do, and the fishing is not only as good, it’s often better than it was before ice up.
What’s even more of a head-scratcher, though, is that those same anglers will frequently tell you they stop fishing for pike in weedy bays during autumn. The cabbage has withered and died, they claim, and the decaying vegetation has sucked the oxygen out of the water. If that were actually true—which it isn’t— why then would they rush back to the weeds at first ice? It’s such a counterproductive strategy.
RIDE ’EM HIGH
Don’t make the mistake of jigging—or suspending your dead baits—too close to bottom and below the fish. Northern pike use structure, cover, available daylight and the underside of the ice to silhouette their prey. They are fine-tuned predators that isolate forage swimming above them, so fishing too high is better than fishing too low.
HIT THE MAIN LAKE
One of the coolest things I’ve discovered about Shield-lake pike is they will follow and prey upon the whitefish and ciscoes dispersing back out into the main lake. And they’ll intercept them on the same rock and boulder points, bars, saddles and reefs that we typically target for wintertime walleye, sauger and perch. The pike tend to hold a little shallower, so I’ll often hang a dead bait under a tip-up in their preferred 10- to 20-foot zone, while I jig for walleye and perch out deeper on the same structure.
When I’m ice fishing solely for big northerns, on the other hand, I’ll ring the structure with holes within the prime depth zone. I’ll then set a quickstrike-rigged dead bait in one hole, while I jig a 3½-inch Rapala Jigging Rap or Jigging Shadow Rap in a second. I remove the treblehook from the Jigging Rap—a trick I learned from Stange—because you almost always hook pike on either the front or back single hook. The treble also tends to snag on the underside of the hole as you try to land the fish. The hugely realistic Jigging Shadow Rap lacks a front hook, however, so I keep its treble attached for insurance, and only auger wide 10-inch holes to minimize snags.
My early- and midwinter Shield-structure strategy is to run-andgun as many main-lake structures as possible over the course of the day. And while it may sound strange, as soon as I catch a really nice fish, I typically move on. That’s because of something else I’ve discovered about these main-lake rock fish—you’ll typically catch only one or two on a structure, but they will almost always be big. Most days, in fact, it’s harder to catch a fish weighing less than 10 pounds, with a disproportionate number averaging almost twice that size.
According to Casselman, large pike are fiercely territorial and intolerant of other large pike (the exception being if they grew from fry together). That’s why you’ll rarely find more than one lunker on the same structure or cover. Indeed, one of my most memorable days of fishing was when I was hosting Stange, who was filming an episode In-Fisherman TV. We put close to 100 kilometres on our snow machines, hopscotching from one mainlake rock reef to another. I forget how many King Kong northerns we hauled in that day, but it was as impressive as the size of the fish. And we never caught more than one pike on any single piece of structure.
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SUSPEND A DEAD BAIT IN ONE HOLE AND JIG A JIGGING SHADOW RAP (TOP) OR JIGGING RAP IN THE OTHER
WORK THE WEEDS
Of course, no discussion about ice fishing for pike would be complete without getting into the weeds. It’s the place to be when a lake is shallow with no deepwater structures, and devoid of pelagic forage such as whitefish, ciscoes and rainbow smelt. Even in lakes that offer all of those things, however, pike will still crowd into grassy cover at last ice as they stage to spawn. But not just any weeds will do.
“Pike are fussy about the density of the aquatic vegetation,” says Casselman, pointing to some interesting Dutch studies on pike and prey behaviour. “If the vegetation was too dense, pike were unable to control a burgeoning prey base. We know, of course, that pike predation involves an edge effect, normally preying out of the edge of weedbeds.”
Out of the 195 pike caught during the Dutch research, more than half were caught in areas with less than 35 per cent weed cover. The conclusion? If the weeds are too thick, you won’t find the pike there.
During his own research in several northeastern Ontario lakes, Casselman also discovered the density of weed growth in a lake strongly influences the population of pike, and their ultimate size. In short, he found you are more likely to catch a trophy-sized pike in a lake or reservoir with plenty of open water and tapering weed edges, than in a lake that resembles Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp. When it comes to weeds and pike, you can definitely have too much of a good thing.
IF A LAKE IS SHALLOW WITH NO STRUCTURE OR PELAGIC PREY, HIT THE WEEDS
block ’em in
If I’m ice fishing a jagged weedline, I drill my holes at the tip of weedy points and along inside turns. But if the edge is fairly straight, as is often the case when the grass grows along a contour, I’ll place my tip-ups perpendicular to the weedline. That way, the pike will run into at least one of my dead baits, no matter how they follow the edge.
TYLER SPEED (ANGLER); GORD PYZER (DEAD BAIT, QUICK-STRIKE RIG)
CIRCLE HOOKS ON DEAD BAITS MAKE FOR SAFE LIVERELEASES
DROP A DEAD BAIT
There’s no disputing pike go gaga for fresh dead baits such as ciscoes, suckers and smelt (where legal), or even store-bought mackerel and saltwater herring. The best way to present a dead bait is under a tip-up using either a quick-strike rig or a circle hook. You can easily make your own quick-strike rig with 14 to 18 inches of 20- to 30-pound titanium, stainless steel or sevenstrand wire. Simply tie or crimp on two #4 Gamakatsu Round Bend Treble Hooks, spaced 2½ inches apart, to one end of the leader, then add a #4 swivel (or snap) to the other end.
Doug Stange pioneered the use of quick-strike rigs and dead baits for pike in North America more than 30 years ago, learning the fine points from Dutch experts such as Jan Eggers. Doug and I quarrel to this day about whether it’s best to hang your bait horizontally (my preference) or vertically (his choice). Try them both and decide for yourself, but always remember to keep the front half of your dead bait free of hooks. You want one treble embedded near the tail and the other pierced lightly under the skin at the dorsal fin. Pike always take dead baits headfirst, so when you see a tip-up flag fly, sweep-set immediately—that’s why they’re called quick-strike rigs. That way, you’ll pin the fish in the lips, never in the throat, making for a safe and easy live-release.
Quick-strike rigs have served me over the years—I can honestly say I’ve never deeply hooked a fish—but using a single barbless 5/0 Gamakatsu circle hook (4/0 for smaller dead baits) has taken the dead-bait game a step further. I attach my circle hook to an 18-inch length of 30-pound AWS Surflon Micro Supreme, a wonderful tieable stainless steel wire. I’ve also been experimenting with 40- and 50-pound Maxima Ultragreen monofilament and fluorocarbon line, and have no quarrels whatsoever—it has worked beyond my expectations. Just make sure the hook is perfectly straight and not bent or offset to one side or the other. (Also please see www.outdoorcanada.ca/ quickstrikepike.)
What I particularly like about circle hooks is that when you see a flag fly, there’s no rush. If the ice is slick, you can tiptoe out slowly, lift the tip-up out of the hole, grab the line and pull steadily in one direc-
tion. Never jerk-set a circle hook or you’ll lose the fish. When you do it right, however, you’ll lock the hook so securely in the side of the northern’s mouth that you’ll need pliers to pop it free.
And since there’s never a second hook swinging around with this rig, you can slide your hand down along the fish’s head and slip your fingers in behind its gill plate to pull it up the hole. Circle hooks are not only better for the fish, they’re clearly better for the angler, too. OC
