Deep Jigging Plastics

Latin names for species tend to be apt. The brook trout, for instance, is salvelinus fontinalus, which translates roughly as char living in springs. No species designation is more apt, however, than esox lucious, the water wolf.

"Pike definitely school at times," according to Jim Lindner, In-Fisherman field editor. "They roam around in packs and hunt like wolves." Racist wolves. Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe smallmouths are the racists and the pike are laissez faire. But they definitely practice some kind of apartheid. In warm, stable weather, smallmouths wander the shallow tips of reefs and sunken islands while pike keep to the depths. After a cold front, they trade places. Pike put smallmouths on the back of the bus, ship 'em deep, and commandeer prime, shallow foraging areas.

Folks want to fish pike shallow, because it's easy (visible structure) and they've historically had some success doing it. On big main-lake weedbeds, a few gators always patrol the perimeter. But, truth be known, most anglers fail to find good pike consistently. "Because," Jim points out," they're not fishing deep enough. A lot of pike fishermen say they're fishing deep; they're talking 15 to 20 feet. That's not deep to a pike. Just about everywhere we go in North America, big pike spend much of the season below 25 feet."

In-Fisherman Founder Al Lindner has a decided affinity for gators. He's been chasing pike throughout the seasons over many years and has had his share of problems finding them in transition from one calendar period to the next. "Big pike seem to become scarce when the water hits the 60F range in late spring and early summer," Al says. "But it only seems that way. Tullibees (ciscoes) and perch, key forage species for big pike, move deeper just as the water reaches 60F on top, and pike follow them down.

"Once you've identified the right area, cruise around, searching for big schools of bait with sonar. Don't waste time casting blind, because the size of the area required to maintain a lot of big pike is pretty big.

"Wind drives the pattern. A steady wind blowing into the area will set pike up on the windward side of a structure, even when they're deep. All the pike could be on one side of a huge reef one day, and the next day they could be positioned altogether differently. Clouds of bait are key. Find the food. Late last summer fish were down as deep as they could go without leaving the flats or crossing the thermocline. When we finally found bait, we found packs of gators."

"We sight fish them with electronics and vertically jig with big jig-plastic combos," says In-Fisherman field editor Jim Lindner. "It's a visual game. At times, we can actually watch big hooks reacting to the bait on sonar. During stable weather, we position the boat where we can make long casts to 10 or 15 feet of water and work the jig down to 35 feet or so, using 1/2- to 1 1/2-ounce jigs (such as those offered by Bait Rigs Tackle, Jack's Jigs, Owner American, Nichols Lures, and Walker Tackle) with big reeper tails, lizards, Slug-Gos, or grubs. The idea is to balance the line with the weight of the jig and the size of the plastic so the thing casts a mile and drops like a rock.