Anyone use chunks of fish on their tip-ups?

[Steve Foss]

I'm exploring new winter pike deadbait options, now that it's illegal to fish with unprocessed cisco and smelt in Minnesota. For those who don't know, on Thursday the DNR put out an emergency ruling requiring anyone using smelt and cisco to only buy it from a permitted bait seller who has first processed it to kill potential VHS by soaking it in alcohol or packing it in borax/salt.

Either process will change the smell/taste of the bait, as well as making it probably a good bit more expensive, so I'm kind of sniffing around for other affordable options.

I can buy suckers and freeze them. That would work. I'm not looking at livebait options, since deadbait outfishes live by 4:1 or 5:1 for me.

So two options are goldeye and whitefish. Goldeye are great for cats, and I have no doubt pike gobble them on waters where they both live. Finding small ones (6-10 inches) would be a problem. Same deal with whitefish. I'm looking for a couple whitefish netters up here to work with.

So does anyone fish chunks of larger deadbait under their pike tip-ups instead of the smaller whole deadbaits? I'd probably cut the bigger fish into 1-inch-long steaks. Think salmon steaks, but just not as big. Like we prep goldeye for cat bait along the Red River. That way you'd get some guts in with the bait, which would not work if you filleted it.

I'd be surprised if pike give a fat rip about whether what they're scavenging a small whole fish or a piece of a larger fish. Heck, it might even work better, because cutbait puts more taste/scent in the water than whole baits. Now wouldn't that be a great silver lining to this whole VHS/bait debacle?

Thoughts?

[reinhard1]

i have cought lake trout on the bottom with just the rib cage of a walley in canada when nothing was available. i have also cought northerns the next day after cleaning walleys for a meal and throwing the ribcage and slins in the lake from the boat in small hard to access lakes in canada and then cleaning the northerns and finding the skins and ribs in them. so i believe they are scavengers and even half or chunks will work. good luck.

[Hoffer]

Steve-

Hey, good post. First of all - I hadnt heard that ruling - thats very interesting!

One of my favorite things to target on the ice with tip-ups is big norts. My favorite bait was always those huge live shinner minnows - but now they cant import those anymore - so I have been using live suckers - but they are pretty costly. The one thing I stumbled upon on my last trip to Canada a few weeks agao - were sardines. We arent supposed to cross the border with smelt where we fish in Ontario. So, I found some packaged really nicely from Portugal. They come about 12 to a bag for 6 bucks. These arent what you would think of when you normally think of sardines. They were large (about the size of a nice medium perch) and bluish - silver in color. They worked awesome - as they stayed together REALLY nice - and didnt disintegrate like a smelt does after being in the water for a few minutes. And the real bonus was the big norts just went crazy over them!! I used them under a bobber and in 2 hours one aternoon caught 12 norts all over 30 inches. I am going to try them this winter ice-fishing. Hopefully there wasnt anything in the new ruling that said anything about "sardines"

[reinhard1]

thanks for that post. there is a korean store i go to for certain spices and food items. now that you mentioned sardines i saw the same thing frozen in their store in the freezer along with other small ocean fish up to 12 in. they have got to have a decent oder and i'm going to check them out. good luck.

[Steve Foss]

Hoffer, thanks so much for the perspective! Wanna shoot me an e-mail with the source for those sardines?

[Hoffer]

Yes...I was going to keep my secret safe - but I will help out a fellow FM'er who was kind enough to help me out with all the downrigger stuff

Only issue is that it wont be a place near you - but I know the guy there - and I bet he could work with you.

[JBMasterAngler]

I was having a conversation today about frozen alternatives for pike this winter, and sardines were my top choice. I'm definitely going to have to pay more attention in the frozen sea food department next time I go shopping.

[Steve Foss]

Just did a bunch of searching online, and there are plenty of places that ship Portuguese sardines. When figuring size/weight, looks like they are about $12-$15/dozen. Yikes!

[Hoffer]

Steve-

Hey, thats the issue I was wondering about...shipping alone to get them to your area would be more costly then the fish themselves. I just talked to my bait guy where i bought mine and he only had one bag left - which he put aside. He also said they are seasonal and he doesnt get them in on a consistent basis. So, I am going to just go back to my old stand by the live sucker minnow. They are a little cheaper per dozen - and I always like live bait vs. dead. Although there are times it seems like they prefer dead...overall a big live sucker minnow will work most times.

[Steve Foss]

Hoffer, I've had exactly the opposite results with live vs dead bait. Go figure.

In N.D., Minn., and Wis., I used to fish live and dead at the same time, and dead always outproduced live, usually by a large margin. So much so that I quit worrying about hassling with live bait and only bring dead these last few years. This has held true when fishing 4 tip-ups with a mix of live and dead (N.D.), three tip-ups (Wis.) and two (Minn.) My theory is that active pike will smack live or dead bait, but neutral or inactive pike are much more likely to eat a deadbait. I've had a lot of 25-30 flag days in Minnesota waters by myself using deadbait on two tip-ups, and never had that kind of success with live bait. And when I'm out in the company of other winter pike anglers I keep a close eye on success rates of live vs dead.

Particularly in Minnesota, there seems to be a longstanding tradition of sticking with live suckers for winter pike. I think the majority of folks here either use only live suckers or make sure they have a live sucker on at least one tip-up. It makes sense to assume that, on some waters at least, live may outproduce dead, but I never found a lake where that was true in my own travels.

So many different ways to catch those toothy critters, eh? Sure is a blast!

[Hoffer]

Hey Steve-

I really do tend to agree with you and have really wanted to give dead bait more of a try with my nort tip-ups.

We have tried a few times and then go back to our standards of live bait. I think we just need to stick with it a few days.

with that said, before the Shiner "embargo" - I would have many days with lots of flags and we would fish an equal amount of suckers vs shiners and the shiners always outfished the suckers. But I am also talking about the REAL big shiner minnows - the 5 to 6 inch ones. If I had my choice for one bait to use - i would choose the big shiner minnows. I wonder if the bait shops in Arkansas can ship packs of dead shiner minnows? if they were treated etc..?

[Steve Foss]

You know, I only ever used big shiners for winter pike a couple of times back when I used live bait. Did well, as I recall.

[JBMasterAngler]

I definitely prefer shiners over suckers. I really like rainbow chubs too, but can never find any that ar big enough. Unfortunately shiners are an endangered species around here in the winter time I'm still confident I'll find some good stuff at the grocery store.

Steve, what are you going to do on burntside now?

[Hoffer]

My brother lives up by the Ottertail river in Ottertail county. he has went out with a buddy after redtails and they get huge numbers of big redtails in the river with a seining net. I am not positive but i think that you can take 12 dozen minnows without a license? - Dont quote me on that...he told me at one time - and it was alot. Anyway, I wonder if you could fish with those? I would think a redtail might hold up pretty good? It would be alot cheaper too!

[Acemac]

large plastics with scent????

[mainbutter]

When I fished with my dad in AK for pike, we'd toss dardevles tipped with cut herring. Our catch rates pretty much doubled as soon as we started doing that.

I've also heard of pike hitting cutbait under a bobber while people are chasing cats or bowfin.

I'd say they'd likely hit cutbait under the ice as well.

[trappingaddiction]

How do dead bullheads work under the ice?

[Notcho]

In ND I use frozen herring and hotdogs (seriously)

[mrklean]

frozen shad?