Early Ice Pike

[JBMasterAngler]

There's a lake I want to try early in the season for pike. There's 1 small 20 ft hole, but pretty much the entire lake is about 5 ft (give or take a foot). Can I pretty much set tip ups anywhere, or should I be concentrating around the hole?

[pikestabber]

That can depend on a lot of factors. How big is the lake? What is the weed-line structure like? Is there any structure around the hole, or is it just a hole? Is there a river or creek inlet or outlet?

Early ice pike will be roaming very near the weed-lines in most situations. If it is a possibility, I would set up between the start of the drop into the hole and the edge of the weeds. Early ice pike are usually pretty aggressive, so spread your tip ups far apart with multiple fishermen if you can. If you don't have a flag within an hour, move them again to try different depths, etc, IMO.

[deadeye]

I would find breaks in the weeds and fish those.

Maybe see if you can find green stuff and fish the edges of that.

[Steve Foss]

I'd pick the weed edge near the hole. If you are alone and only have two lines, I'd set one up a couple feet below the ice in a pocket in the weeds and the other half way down the water column just off the deep weed edge heading toward the hole.

Bigger pike, while they for sure can be anywhere in the water column in winter, do tend to like proximity to deeper water unless they are pre-spawn.

[JBMasterAngler]

The lake is about 300 acres, no structure, and pretty clear water. It's absolutely loaded with pike, mostly hammer handles, but the occasional fish over 5 pounds. The lake does not have white suckers, but a high population of golden shiners...would that be the best bait option?

[Northlander]

I love goldens for pike. They are always good pike bait as well as walleye. Inland smelt are another great bait and work on any lake.

[Steve Foss]

The lake does not have white suckers, but a high population of golden shiners...would that be the best bait option?

IMO, smelt or cisco. Always. They are top pike producers on waters that don't have smelt or cisco, too.

[deadeye]

++ what Steve said. For whatever reason they wont leave a big old Cisco alone. Even here in the cities I always outfished live bait with them. I think they like them so much because they are such a easy meal and are so greasy.

[Jaspernuts]

I have always had luck with shiners but want to try ciscos. Where the heck can u get them?

[deadeye]

I always stock up whenever I'm up in Ely but in the cities Vados has them all winter.

[Steve Foss]

Dead outfishes live bait for winter pike 4-1, in my experience across MN, northern WI and ND.

Reason? I believe an active winter pike will take live or dead bait readily. A neutral winter pike will not take live bait as readily but will still hit dead bait. A negative pike may not go for anything at all, but if it goes for something, it'll be dead.

I liked tip-up fishing for pike a lot more once I realized I didn't have to carry live suckers around and hassle with keeping them from freezing. Chuck a few packs of cisco or smelt in the kit and hit the ice. Not only simpler, but more productive.

There's a long tradition of using live suckers for winter pike in Minnesota. It's hard to break through generations of habit. I'm not saying suckers don't catch pike in winter. I'm just saying it's not the most efficient way to catch numbers of pike and large pike. For years I fished live and dead bait side by side, or fished my dead baits in the company of others with live shiners and suckers. And it almost always seemed to go 4-1. On a very few days it seemed neck and neck, and those were the days there were large numbers of active fish. Other days dead bait produced almost every single flag.

[JBMasterAngler]

I think I still have some cisco's from my last trip up north. I guess I've never really given those a chance, hence the reason I've never had much success with tipups I did much prefer shiners over suckers though, as they were much more active, but alot harder (and expensive) to find. Well, this will probably be one of the 1st lakes I head out this winter, so we'll see what happens.

[Rippinlip]

So how do you set these up? Do you just hang them suspended and hook them once through the back?

[Steve Foss]

So how do you set these up? Do you just hang them suspended and hook them once through the back?

Yep. Quick-strike rigs work really well with dead bait, too. I tend to hang them a bit head-down, but I don't think that matters one single bit. Fish that eat dead bait aren't very picky as to its orientation. I just like making sure a hook is about midway in the bait to ensure that a slow-eating fish has the hook in its mouth when I set it.

Actually, these days I use a single smallish treble rigged directly to Sevenstrand wire. Been doing that the last three winters, with very few missed fish and not a single gut hooked fish. For folks who don't do a lot of tip-upping for pike, I definitely recommend the quick-strike rigs.

[reinhard1]

i believe one of the reasons pike nail the dead smelt specificly is the scent they produce in the water [and on your hands]. i remember when i was a kid we used them then. they were also used to troll for pike with stripons. we used dead smelt in canada off shore with lindy type rigs and it worked also for lake trout.good luck.