pike & walleye rigging for tip ups

[52#FLATHEAD]

I have some tip ups & am going to try for some pike & walleye soon. What is the typical rig for dead bait? Treble or single hook & what size? Leader length, etc?

[Steve Foss]

Flat: Welcome to FM. Good to see you here. Here's how I do it.

Pike: I tie/crimp my own leaders for pike tip-ups, using sevenstrand wire or the plastic coated leader wire with sleeves, swivels, etc. I use a single treble hook, but add a small plastic spinner blade so the rig is legally a "lure" in Minnesota. It's the treble that makes you put on the blade. I use 50 lb fireline for the tip-up line. It has a coated feel and doesn't soak up as much water as regular braids, which then freeze and makes things VERY stiff. And it's far less prone to nicks and weak spots than mono. Above the leader I clamp a couple split shot of decent size, and I hook a dead frozen cisco through the back and fish it a foot off the bottom or half way up the water column. Many prefer quick-strike rigs, and I've used them with great success myself. But the lone treble is simpler, and, IF YOU DON'T GET TOO FAR FROM YOUR TIP-UPS, you easily can slide your way over there in time so you don't deep-hook your Esox. I've fished this way for several seasons, and have only had to keep one pike out of hundreds because it was deep hooked. I tie two jingle bells to the flag or shaft of my tip-up so I hear every flag even if I'm looking in the wrong direction. In all the years I've targeted pike for tip-ups, in my experience, dead bait outperforms live bait three to one. But for those who don't tie their own, just buy quick-strike rigs (series of two hooks, one of which slides up and down the leader to customize to the size of the bait) or regular leaders (and just add a hook/spinner).

Walleyes: I have a couple different tip-ups than my pike tip-ups. Doesn't matter what style, that's not what's different. I just rig them with lighter mono, usually 10 lb. Most walleyes on tip-ups come on low-light bites, though not all, so 10 lb is a compromise that's light enough not to spook them when there's enough light and heavy enough so I'm not going to lose a fish because cold hands are clumsy hands. I either throw on a bare hook (glow, colored or plain, depending on what I think the fish's mood will be), with a small glow bead above it, hooking the minnow through the back toward the tail, and add a couple split shot about a foot or two feet above the hook. On that tip-up is not only a set of bells, but a strip of reflective glow tape. When targeting low-light walleyes, you see, I leave a lantern on outside my flipover shelter, set on low, so if for some reason I don't hear the bells I'll see the tape in the lantern glow. I usually position my minnow about a foot off the bottom. If I'm using nothing but tip-ups, I'll drill holes in a line from deeper to shallower water, and when fishing the evening bite will start out in the two deepest holes. Then, when the action is over on the deepest hole and has transferred to the second-deepest hole, I'll leapfrog my deepest tip-up in shallower, and so on as the evening progresses. Sometimes, if fish are moving quickly, this gets pretty crazy. Other times, depending on the day and the spot, fish move slower, and the leapfrog dance is elegant and effective.

One note: Walleyes are well known to be spooky, so you don't go stomping around, cutting cookies on sleds/wheelers and running all over the place or shouting when you're fishing them. And guess what? I've found pike are the same way. I always remember Elmer Fudd . . . "Quiet, we'w hunting wabbitssss."