help on catching pike today

[adamolson7]

okay i'm stumped... i went through a metro lake on saturday and trolled as close to the outside edge of weedline as i could without getting snagged all of the time. we threw spinners on the inside edge and no pike. this lake has a healthy population and the survey was just done in 2007. my brother and i used to catch them out there trolling this one spot and we trolled that spot several times on sat ... we marked fish but they were crappies...i'm not sure what else to try. we can catch bass no problem but pike are a mystery out there please help

[Esoxmn]

you may have to try up in 2 to 4 feet, the water is still pretty cold. also look for river or creek inlets.

[itchmesir]

did you try speeding it up.. i had to rip spinners through the water the other day to get pike to hit...

[pinkfloyd4ever]

I'm with itchmesir- Monday I had my best day ever and this is from a guy who coined the phrase "there is not a lure made I can catch a fish on" Fast retrieve outside weed edges worked for me.

[Aaron Carrell]

We experienced the same thing on Saturday morning. We found that the only way we got pike to hit was cranks or rattlebaits and moving them FAST on the deep weed edge. Most of the time i was just ticking the tops of the weeds, but the other guys who actually caught 1 or 2 more than me did well fishing a few feet suspended above weeds in 8-10' of water. They were hitting hard and it was fun. I didn't find [PoorWordUsage] any shallower than 5' on Saturday, but the rain may have had something to do with that. We were kept off the lake until around 7:15 when it stopped.

[crazyice]

I was out on Sunday and had the same kind of bad luck. I fished hard for the pike for a while and got discouraged pretty fast. Tried numerous different baits at different depths and no takers.

[adamolson7]

Awesome! thanks for the tips...def. going to try ripping those baits faster this weekend. going to be fishing the same lake i'll be ripping spinners and spoons on that outside edge... they'll be moving deeper soon as it gets warmer though right? or are they deeper already

[Jim Uran]

You would think they would have been deeper from the way you were fishing and didn't catch any! Is that the same day the high pressure came through and opened up the sky! Pretty blue bird day up my way, how deep do them weeds grow in that lake?

[itchmesir]

yea.. i would have thought they may have gone deep already too.. but i found a school of them in water that was no more than 2' deep... as long as the bluegils are in the shallows.. you're more than likely gonna find the pike there as well... but i also have caught some pike on cranks that run 5-7'

[OnAFly]

I was out yesterday and found them on the sharp drops with weeds. I didn't think they were there until I started throwing big flies and letting them sink a bit before stripping line back in. They wouldn't touch my Rapalas, only flies.

[Muddog]

I have had alot of luck trolling spoons 30feet back of the boat 3-10inches below the surface. You can drop you rod tip down and to the back when you move off of the weeds and let the spoon tumble deeper. Bring it back close to the surface when weeds are under the boat. This is a killer when the weed top are still a foot or two from the surface, around the season opener. A longer rod work well for this type of fishing.

I have been having fun with a single prop "Amazon Ripper". I have replaced the hook with a round bend hook of the same size in hopes to get better hookups.

So I guess what I'm saying is try fishing higher in the water column.

[fishuhalik]

We did really well Saturday slow-rolling 1/2-3/4oz spinnerbaits over top of weeds. Got a lot of fish and a few nice ones, too.

[JesseParker1]

I have been nailing them with black spinnerbaits with an orange blade on them. Got 5 in a matter of a couple of minutes. Right outside the weed beads win about 11 feet of water.