Do Northerns bite at night?

[Ziesmer]

I fish a lake that is full of Northerns. Is it worth fishing at night?

[reinhard1]

chances of catching pike at night are slim. i have cought pike early in the evening but never late at night. we had a thread like this before and some had some luck. but on average most are caught during daylight hours. my brother caught a nice 10 pounder in the harbor in Duluth trolling for walleys years ago and that was around 9 pm. not impossible but i would not target them during the night. good luck.

[MattL]

It would be tough to target them specifically, but I seem to run into 1-2 a year while fishing walleyes after dark.

[biff]

Will pike bite at night? Definitely and sometimes very well but depends on the situation. I fish for walleyes quite a bit at night in the fall and catch quite a few pike mixed in. Sometimes I catch more pike than walleye. I've havent done much ice fishing after dark period so who knows? I have caught pike at night late fall when there was getting to be a lot of ice on the lake. May depend on the clarity of the lake with the additional ice cover blocking out more light they might not. Might have to just hit some good pike spots at night and see what happens.

[grizrunner]

I've never seen one caught after dark, hard or soft water. Not to say it won't happen. I just haven't fished every lake after dark(yet)

[slipperybob]

Without the snow cover, night fishing for pike may be a slim more chance than heavy snow cover.

[MidCoast]

I have caught Pikes at night but during the Spring and Summer time only.

[herefish101]

Maybe with the clear ice and on a full moon, but it's usually during the day that I target them.

[schweady]

Yup, sometimes. Darndest thing.

[Gordie]

I have never targeted pike at night but I have caught one on soft water fishing walleyes and I have caught a muskie at night thru the ice many years ago .

Typically the pike are day time feeders and I think the am hours are the best time to target them.

I would never say that they wouldnt bite at night but I would never target them after dark either

[OnAFly]

I've caught them at night, but as others have said, they are much more active during the day.

[Traxxx]

If your on a lake with a good population of pike, you can catch them after dark once in while.

I've caught quite a few on glow spoons after dark while fishing crappies. Here's something that worked for a buddy and I after dark on some big pike, albeit kind of an unusual circumstance.

We were sitting over a 25' crappie hole and kept noticing these big marks on the flasher. These were big fish just sitting 5'-8' below the house. We'd see them almost every night after dark. Tried to fish for them with big spoons, big air plane jis and other big lures to no avail. We figured they must be big pike sitting there waiting and picking off the crappies, as we released them back down the hole. So we decided to pick up some sucker decoys, the size you would use for spearing. We put them down on a tip-up in the house with us, right at the level we were seeing the marks. First night we tried it this 38" bit at 10:30pm. We've since caught several other big ones up to 40" doing this same technique.

[Scott M]

They just don't have the night vision other predators associated with night activity have (walleyes, crappies). But you always manage a few it seems. I've pulled up a few hammerhandles on crappie glow jigs and occasionally a decent fish charges in while walleye fishing after dusk.

[Live4Fishing]

Last winter I was on a lake up north and fishing in about 30 ft of water right off the bottom, it was about 8:30 at night, bobber starts to slowly go down so i set the hook and end up fighting this fish for 8 mins, everytime i got my slipknot in the reel the fish would take a huge run....i was a wreck! finally the line breaks and so did my heart, im thinking walleye the entire time.

Go up the very next weekend, same exact spot, and im not kidding it was about the same time...bobber again goes down very slowly, set the hook and same thing, only thing different is i was using braided line this time so i knew i had him, then that big pike head comes in the hole...my GF was afraid to reach in and grab him LOL, it was 8 pounds.

[leech~~]

You can catch them at night.

You need a flash light a burlap bag and a stick!

[smeese]

We got a nice one the other night, but with no snowcover and our lantern glowing though 4-5 inches of clear ice I think it may have given her the advantage to find the bait. Probably also why no walleyes showed themselves too. Water was just a few feet deep as well.

[Stick in Mud]

Yup, they do, but I've never targeted them, so I don't know if it could be done effectively...unless you start putting down bit old speaking decoys.