Northern Pike Tips & Tricks
8 great tips for catching Monster Northern Pike
Wear polarized sunglasses.
Most folks fish for trophy Pike in shallow waters. Polarized glasses do more than protect your eyes from the sun’s glare off the water or ice. They allow you to see into the water you are fishing, making it easy to see which fish you want to try to catch. Also essential is a good long brim hat and side protectors/blockers on your glasses to block out even more glare.
Good wire leaders.
A Pike is a giant mass of sharp teeth and a good wire leader is essential. Make sure the pound test and snaps aren’t so heavy they will actually alert and scare Pike away. Generally a good 12″ leader at 30 lbs. test will do the trick. Anything smaller may be swallowed whole and bitten off, anything larger will be difficult to cast.
Pike like to follow.
Thoroughly inspect shallow water river and bay areas. When looking for big Pike, check the bay bottoms for signs of Pike offal. These will look like large (6″-12″) white/silver blotches If you will fish for them in shallow waters, you can see where to put your lure. Bring it from behind the fish, slowly, to draw its attention. Watch the way the fish reacts to the lure. Take this reaction and decide from here how to get the fish to strike. Pike will follow right up to the boat, so don’t take your lure out too soon.
Use a strong rod.
You need a rod that is medium to heavy action to get the biggest and best Northern Pike. You don’t want one that is a broomstick type; this type will not let you feel the movement of the fish, thus, you won’t know which way best to fight the fish into the boat.
New, heavy test weight line.
This should be obvious, but you don’t want to use last year’s line that you used for river trout on a big trophy Northern Pike. You need strong line that is not dry rotted, tangled or damaged by a season (or more) in your tackle box.
Good weedless spoons.
Adjust your retrieval speed based on the water temperatures. Colder water, slower retrieve. Cold water, especially the freezing temperatures after ice-out, make for slower pike, particularly on overcast days. In this case, go to a slower presentation, a fly or soft plastic that can be fished in a slow or neutral mode. Tease those fish and you’ll be shocked at the explosion that follows!
Match the colours to the cloud cover.
Brighter colors and flash (yellow and silver) usually work better on sunny days, darker (red, orange, brass and copper) work better on overcast days.
Adjust your retrieval speed based on the water temperatures.
Colder water, slower retrieve. Cold water, especially the freezing temperatures after ice-out, make for slower Pike, particularly on overcast days. In this case, go to a slower presentation, a fly or soft plastic that can be fished in a slow or neutral mode. Tease those fish and you’ll be shocked at the explosion that follows!
