May Pike Fishing

[MichaelAngelo]

(04-05-2013 10:46 AM)rich_ace_G Wrote:  

(04-05-2013 10:09 AM)MichaelAngelo Wrote:  congrats Rich! First ice out pike I've seen posted up. Did the pike inhale it when the bait was dead stationary? Or were you twitching it?

funny you mentioned the twitch.
that day, water was very clear I can see my lure 10 feet out. at the end of my retrieve i can't see any follows. this has been going on for maybe an hour. no follows (or so i thought). as a cloud covered part of the sun for a brief moment. I saw a pale shadow following my lure 4 ft away. Polarized glasses really helped. I got excited and as the pike closes in. I gave my lure a slight twitch to give it a lively look...this in fact triggered the pike to move away. Cast again. this time It was just dead stationary and as the pike was closing in again. no twitched. every minute the pike closing in by a foot. this is now right in front of me. probably 3 feet from where i am. pike's mouth 2 inches from my lure. took about 15 seconds before the take. this was the first time for me to witness it. learned a lot about them that day. from that day until closing (2weeks)...never been skunked. all of this info is given based from my non-professional experience...just a mere observation.

Very helpful information. I feel that I can easily overwork my lures. Ice fishing this year, my instinct would be to constantly twitch and move my lure... probably scaring fish away. Some advice I got was to move the lure in a natural, steady fashion.


For example, when fishing swimbaits for lakers my instict would be to add action to the lure by jigging rod tip while retrieving upwards. Some advice I received was to simply retrieve at a slow, steady rate without moving the rod tip. The action of the lure was more than enough and any more could spook fish.