Northerns on opener

[Fowlmouth]

How many of you all will be going after some northerns on opener this weekend? After the morning walleye bite dies down I'm hoping to pick up a couple 2-3lbers for some pickling.

[mwal]

Always keep some for our shore lunch. The walleyes come home for my Mom

Mwal

[20lbSloughShark]

I'm not sure I'll go out on saturday, but I will on sunday. I'm going for big northerns, I'm not concerned with numbers.

[tolle141]

Saturday is supposed to be gorgeous. I'll be checking the various post spawn routes with suspending jerks and tubes. Usually pick up a mega bass or two

[Nick Kuhn]

In Wisconsin we were fishing a lake not long after ice out. Pike were in shallow water near spawning areas. Not even using the creek channel to ambush food: straight up on the very shallow flat. Probably just trying to warm up a bit.

[20lbSloughShark]

Thanks for the tip Nick. Are you talking 6' shallow, or 1' shallow? Did you happen to get the water temp? The water has been very murky the few times I've gone out so far, and I have not seen a single pike in shallow. Actually I haven't seen much of anything. Around dark I saw a bowfin and some carp, but nothing else. Hopefully this weekend will get some pike in shallow. I love when its a close range tug of war.

[Nick Kuhn]

53 degrees, and it was about 1 foot shallow. This same area by midsummer you would never be able to get a boat back to. It was bright sun though when we were back there. By comparison the water we fished the day before was 42.8

[tolle141]

They spawned out weeks ago in the cities.

[Fowlmouth]

Arnt notherns one of the very first fish to spawn?

[Nick Kuhn]

Arnt notherns one of the very first fish to spawn?

Yes, they spawn at ice out. I was fishing only a few days after ice out on this lake. Not 20 miles north lakes were still ice covered.

[20lbSloughShark]

Its my understanding a good portion of the big pike will stay in shallow until the water gets to about 60 degrees, then its a little too warm for them. 50-60 degrees seems to be about optimum for them. Its my experience that boat traffic pushes them out deep early, however. Last year was just bad, but usually panfish are heading out deep by opener. If lots of the smaller fish have moved in, who knows. Pike will go where the food is. They need it after the spawn. For some reason theory often fails in practice when fishing though.

[tolle141]

For big northerns you'd be best off targeting the sucker run if it's occurring near you.

[20lbSloughShark]

Normally I don't fish areas with a definite sucker run. Many lakes near me don't even have feeder creeks. I think I've picked a lake with a healthy population, plenty of shallow bays and flats, and creeks/rivers. I'm thinking of the east side of the horseshoe chain near cold spring. I'll just spend the day (weather permitting) casting in the creek and river mouths, and the shallow areas. I marked up all bays, shallow flats, and creek mouths on navionics. That's the plan anyway.

[ThunderLund78]

We were in the general Brained area and found water temps in the mid 40s. We threw the entire tackle box in the shallow weedy bays and got nothing to show for it. No sign of any baitfish or panfish in shallow yet either. I also have heard that Northerens tend to stay shallow after spawn, but it was an absolute dead sea this weekend. Noticed that there were plenty of yearling perch that would follow our lures if we were casting, but nothing was there to feed on them. Strangely enough, the ONLY species we caught this last weekend was the elusive Walleye, and that was in 30 ft of water. But that's a topic for a different forum

[20lbSloughShark]

Its been my experience (mostly notably last year) that pike wont really start chasing lures until the water warms up. I'm thinking it is around 55 degrees, which is around what I found on the horseshoe chain. I did not have much luck with pike there, but was getting lots of catfish. I did end up with a 32" pike which was nice. It was right in front of a tiny culvert under a road. This thinking is in line with what Jack Penny's book says. He says that in general pike fishing ice out is mostly done with dead bait until about 55 degrees or so. Last year, with late ice out, I couldn't get pike to touch any lure. But that was just a bad opener, we only got 2 on live suckers that day. My guess is you would have done ok with live or dead bait. I have lost all confidence in preserved, MN legal smelt, not to mention they are way over priced. My favorite dead bait is a live sucker that died and I froze. My favorite bait, however, is alive. My favorite size is 8"-10", and I cut the tail off. I have almost gone to cutting the tail off every time, it really does work great. I got 5 pike on saturday, 4 on a dardevle, and 1 on a big sucker without a tail. All of them were in less than 4' of water. The guy I was with got one in less than a foot.