“The mighty Luce or Pike is taken to be the tyrant, as the salmon is king, of the fresh waters” -From The Compleat Angler by Sir Izaak Walton

Pike are icons. “Picons,” if you will. Big pike are commensurate with the North American wilderness, saw-toothed symbols of the untamed. The animal world itself is encapsulated in the approach, the silent glide and menacing eye of a pike poised to spring, slavering to devour, dressed to kill.

So much of Canada is wilderness, and so much of it populated with wide-bodied cylinders of green fury, they should be on the flag. They live way far north of the last maple tree, and they’re a whole lot more fun on a hook and line. Especially those gators, those porky pike in excess of 20 pounds that follow out of the deep, crash through pads and dense reeds, rip through deep cabbage, create heavy boils and deep wakes to turn, chase and appear at boatside, their malignant gaze locked on some helpless lure. The eyes seem to stare you down, but you are not their concern.

Big pike often follow right to boatside. Like muskies. Hence the nightmares. Will it eat? More often than not, it won’t. Muskies didn’t follow when they were “fresh,” either. If you’ve ever been on one of those “forgotten” muskie lakes, stocked long ago when nobody was paying attention, you know this is true. Muskies bite at the end of long casts and rarely follow in such lakes. Until muskie hunters catch on. From that point on, and forever afterward, it seems, muskies follow.

Why is that? “One of the most difficult things to do, anymore, is to find consistent fishing for big pike,” lamented a rival editor at last year’s ICAST fishing-industry show in Las Vegas. “Catching numbers of fish over 40 inches in a day is becoming increasingly rare, even in places where it seemed easy just a few years ago.”

How could that happen, way up beyond the roads? If you need an answer, it might be in the nearest mirror. Most who read this have been up there, in the rarified air of one of the world’s last remaining wilderness zones. And most have hooked a pike or two. The number of people flocking to the Far North to cash in on “untouched” fishing rises every year, and they’re touching a lot of fish.

If you’ve been to a lodge twice, chances are you’ve fished the same spots more than twice. Return five years later and you’re playing musical boats on the same familiar spots, taking turns in the hottest areas with the other guests. (If they time it right, of course, you never see one another, and the guides hope it doesn’t come up over dinner.) The best fishing for numbers is typically a fly-out option, and that costs extra (somewhere between $200 and $1,200 per person per day, depending on distance and logistics involved).

But, typically, the main lake (the one the lodge is named for, in most cases) offers your best shot at a truly huge fish, the semi-mythical, 50-inch northern. And it can be mighty tough out there, especially in August, no matter where you choose to go. But, if you plan on it being tough, fishing can be pretty darn good.

Why Is It Tough?

It may seem like the increasing popularity of camps offering big pike way up north and the increasing pressure make the fishing tough. But that’s not really the case. The fishing gets tough because people fail to respond to the pressure. Pike still bite. It’s in their nature, but not to the point that they go on biting red-and-white Dardevle Huskies forever.

A study called “Acquired hook-avoidance in the pike Esox lucius L. fished with artificial and natural baits,” by J. J. Beukema of the University of Gronigen, The Netherlands, appeared in the Journal of Fish Biology in 1970. It reveals how 58 pike in a pond could be caught at a rate of well over 2 per man-hour with spinners, at first. But that catch rate steadily dropped to about 0.1 pike per hour in less than two days, and the rate stayed at that low level for the entire week that followed. (Livebait catch rates, meanwhile, averaged just below 2 pike per man hour throughout the study period.) Apparently, pike begin to associate artificial baits with danger quite quickly, and maintain avoidance for relatively long periods of time afterwards.

The challenge to catch monsters consistently is reason enough to go. Implied, of course, is the fact that monsters exist. The best fisheries are all catch-and-release, and most of the monsters caught last year are still in the system—a little wiser maybe, but still around. Compounding the challenge is the fact that pike may live in excess of 30 years in many of these environments, in which time they see the most common presentations many times over.

So, stop packing and start over. Think finesse. Big pike still eat big things, so finesse for northerns means big jigs, big hooks, and big plastics, but smaller spoons, blades, and hardbaits. Downsize? Yes, but only with baits they see too much of, like spoons, spinnerbaits, and jerkbaits. And learn to fly-fish. Converts to fly-fishing for pike are manifold, these days. In fact, it’s almost impossible to visit places like Nueltin Lake without ordering a new 10 weight at some point. Nueltin continues to offer world-class pike fishing, but fewer for those who fail to adjust. Bunny-strip leeches will catch pressured pike.

Nueltin also offers one of the most astounding experiences in the pike universe. It’s called Hearne Bay, named after famous Arctic explorer Samuel Hearne, who camped there one winter. Hearne Bay is a vast, shallow paradise of rock and weeds—a sight-fishing Nirvana for the flyrod angler seeking a lifetime best. It’s bone-fishing for big toothies, as the boat is allowed to quietly drift across square mile after square mile of perfect habitat for spotting pike and casting to sighted targets. The size of the average target is mind-boggling. Hearne Bay offers one of those experiences that stands out starkly in a lifetime of big-pike memories.

But, even here, where a pike may wander for 8 months without seeing a fly or a spoon, pressure has an cumulative effect. Pike live in excess of 30 years up there. Fly-fishing with big bunny-strip leech imitations is not only the most entertaining way to go—it’s the most effective approach at a number of lodges in the Far North. Leeches represent food without spines that can’t swim fast. What more do you need to know? Big leech imitations presented with a flyrod represent the ultimate in finesse options for pike.

At Wollaston Lake, where big pike seem to move quite a bit between seasonal habitats, guides informed us that smaller pike kept for shorelunch are often full to overflowing with leeches when cleaned. Big pike commonly fall to bigger leech imitations stripped through the many boulder fields and sparse cabbage beds of Wollaston and many other big northern lakes, but that doesn’t mean a fly is the only way to imitate big leeches.

During my most recent visit to Misaw Lake, one of the most successful tactics we employed involved black, 5- to 7-inch soft sticks, like YUM Dingers, Lunker City Slug-Gos, and Yamamoto Senkos, all of which suggest big leeches. Using only the hook for weight, the sticks were rigged on straight-shafted, size 6/0 to 10/0 Owner hooks. The baits were allowed to drop along weed edges or twitched slowly over rockpiles and boulder fields. Long casts were easy with 30-pound braided line on heavy spinning gear with large spools.

The same tackle will present 1/4- to 3/8-ounce bunny-strip Jensen Jigs, a tactic that worked fabulously at Kasba Lake a few years back. A jig tied with a 5- to 7-inch bunny-strip trailer is a natural leech imitation, but only when it isn’t allowed to drop too fast, thus the small-to-medium jighead. White and firetiger patterns sometimes work well, but brown and black bunny jigs tend to catch about 80 percent of the bigger fish, suggesting that pike are looking for leeches and the natural colors work best—a characteristic we expect to find in wary fish. Unlike the soft-stick approach, bunny jigs are designed for swimming. Keep the rod tip up and pull, nod, drop, and reel; lift it slowly and try to keep it off bottom at the slowest possible pace.

On a fly-in from Selwyn Lake a few years back, In-Fisherman Art Director Chuck Beasley caught some nice specimens on the biggest Lindy Tiger Tube. I continued to experiment and began to score gators with Lunker City Salt Shakers presented on 3/8- to 1/2-ounce jigs and allowed to fall vertically along a break from 5 to 12 feet of water. We both popped several over 40 inches. Pike were hitting both lures on the drop, illuminating the fact that we can’t always depend on pike to be pike and slash horizontal presentations with gusto. That day, the real specimens wanted the lure falling straight down.

In the mid- to southern latitudes of the Far North, when faced with big, deep cabbage beds in places like North Knife Lake, the Churchill River, Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake, during August when the fishing gets tough, I’ve relied on larger bass-sized spinnerbaits many times to get the job done. One of my favorites is the Hildebrandt Okeechobee Special, which sports a single size #7 willowleaf blade. Another favorite is a small muskie spinnerbait from Fudally called the Musky Candy Spin, a twin-Colorado model with a short, tight-angled arm. Spinnerbaits in those sizes are must-have items for toothies of the Far North.

Spinning blades, in general, maintain a universal appeal for esox lucius. Smaller muskie bucktails, like the Lindy Musky Roller, can be amazingly effective at times, but don’t forget to pack a few without hair. Filming on Wollaston last year, the guide (Rob “Crash” Wilson) boated one big pike after another with a size #6, bare-bones Blue Fox Vibrax spinner.

Up in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Province, big pike stay shallow all summer and well into fall. For big pike in open water, consider driving to Tobin Lake, Lake Winnipeg, Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, and other destinations just across the border. Big Shield pike often cruise the flats in 40- to 60-foot depths during summer. On windy, cloudy days they come up and take over the shallow reefs. Down deep, use a big jig-plastic combo. Try 1- to 2-ounce Bait Rigs Cobra heads coupled with a 7-inch Reaper Tail, Mann’s Jelly Hoo, or other straight tails. Action tails slow the combo down. The idea is to get it on bottom quick in 50 feet of water. When they come up on the reefs, suspending minnowbaits rule.

A lighter 1/2-ounce Cobra matched with a Jelly Hoo is still a big favorite of mine around cabbage beds. The cupped underside of a Cobra helps keep the package up in the weedtops, with the rod tip held high while being constantly snapped upward, reeling as the rod tip is dropped. I developed the tactic at Misaw Lake many years ago, and it continues to entice big northerns and river muskies whenever I find them in weeds. Mann’s Jelly Hoo is a necessary ingredient, because it’s so incredibly flappy. Take lots, though. Big toothies tend to tear them up at a rapacious rate. Where weeds get really dense, another must-have item becomes the Musky Innovations Chatterbait, basically a jig with a big blade on its face that makes the package rise. This bait wobbles and walks over the nastiest tangles of weeds and precipitates monstrous, frothing boils. It produced some giant pike for us on Lake of the Woods last year.

In waters where the biggest pike have seen it all, Lucky Craft Pointer 128s and the new Rapala X-Rap Xtreme Slashbaits become the most dependable hardbaits. A bait that transforms in an instant from wild, erratic, side-to-side action to motionless suspension is a lock. Something about suspending baits drives big toothies nuts—probably the fact that they stall without rising or dropping, forcing following pike to make a decision to turn or strike. Filming with the Xtreme Slashbait on Wollaston last year, it produced the biggest pike of the trip—a fish that followed it to boatside, lunched the lure, and proceeded to froth water on the camera, the cameraman, and everything else within 20 yards.

That’s why we go—to get impromptu showers from fish almost too big to handle with a proclivity for hitting lures at our feet. We go to stare down a mythical 50-incher. But we also go to figure them out when they’re tough. It’s not that easy anymore, but the rewards can be better. To trick something that’s never been tricked isn’t much of a trick. Tricking a 50-incher that’s been around the block a few times—now, that’s a trick, mate. To do it requires thought, and more finesse than ever before. This year, think about anything pike haven’t seen that should work, and pack it.