The Nature of The Beast Means There’s an Alternative to Sit & Wait

The best flats (or bars) usually have a variety of bottom conditions, with weedgrowth an important part of the equation. The largest of these flats usually attracts the most pike and requires more time to probe. Small bars produce comparatively fewer fish but don’t take long to probe. Often, though, when lots of people are on large bars, working numbers of small bars produces good action, too. You just have to be willing to move more.

Pike often are characterized as ambush predators, but that’s rarely the case. They hunt with intent. A group of pike moves onto a bar and makes it a home area until the food gives out. They aren’t schooled, but smaller fish often seem to be working the same general areas at the same time. Bigger pike aren’t pack fish, although several big pike may be working a sizeable bar.

When the pike become active, they roam the area, becoming familiar with it the way coyotes become familiar with the series of fields and woodlots they call home. Pike quickly recognize prime spots where baitfish gather, so they swim slowly along a weededge, then hold for a while in a particular weed pocket or weedpoint. They move up on a flat, too, looking to roust baitfish. They might swivel through heavy weedgrowth, instead, and then station for a moment in a weed pocket or along an interior edge.

When

First-ice and throughout the early portion of the ice season is prime time; mid-season less so; late season so-so until just before ice-out, when pike get active again. Fishing peaks in the morning, often beginning just before daybreak, which is the opposite of what most anglers think. Anglers usually equate warmer afternoons with increased activity, although water temperature isn’t affected under ice.

Pike are more active in the morning because during winter they don’t feed effectively after dark; so, a higher percentage of fish are cranked right away in the morning because usually they’ve fasted for 12 hours. The fishing usually lasts into early afternoon and then tapers as most of the pike have fed by that time. In more than 30 years of winter fishing for pike, I can remember only a handful of big fish caught late in the day. During midseason, the best fishing occurs during midday. And during late season, it slips back to a morning-into-early to mid-afternoon bite.

Gear

A portable ice shack’s necessary unless you’re going to work with a sonar unit in conjunction with an underwater camera like the Nature Vision Aqua-Vu. Even the camera, though, works better inside a shack. The camera and sonar combo, of course, allows you to work into deeper water where you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see pike down a surface hole.

Using the camera is more time consuming than fishing shallow enough to see fish down the hole. My preferred method is to work with a flip-up-down shack that can be pulled along quickly from hole to hole. The USL Fish Trap and Otter Sled are two that I’ve used. The friends I mentioned earlier like portables such as the Frabill Speed Shack that take only seconds longer to set up. More “permanent” shacks don’t allow the mobility necessary to make the system work to the tune of lots of fish. A darkened shack interior allows you to see effectively down the hole, so you can work your lure to entice a pike to come in.