[Brevet]

Pike are a huge pain in the neck when bass fishing clear water.
In lakes with clear water and large populations of small pike, I cannot fish swimbaits or crankbaits.

12-24 inch pike smoke these slow moving realisitic lures and ingulf the entire bait. Those dam*d Storn 3"&4" crappies are completly swallowed by the little hammer handles. So are minus ones and any small baits. The fish are to small to use jaw spreaders on and too little to survive the hard handling of trying to remove the plugs.
Happened twice over the weekend. lost 2 lures. AND I KNEW BETTER
Whenever I fish the strip mine lakes that have a bunch of small pike,, I use single hook rigs. Shoulda remembered!

Saturday, I saw it coming. I was slow swimminmg the storm and I saw the pike shoot up and grab it. I set as fast as I could but it had still completely devoured the bait!. Sunday I was throwing a 22 dragging up a slope. BAM! Ends up to be a 14 inch pike with about 1/2 inch of crankbait lip sticking out its mouth. The entire lure was down its gullet.

You can get away with lipless crankbaits. Seems they have small hooks and I think the speed helps for a less deep hookset. But those darn storm swimbaits are dynamite for little pike. It just seems to tear the poor little guys up though!

BTW great bass baits.

 

[ffishman]

Are you bragging, or complaining?

 

[Fishstalker25]

dude be happy your catching ANYTHING

 

[TonyH]

Yeah! I cant figure out if your complaining or not :-D .
I gotta tell ya, I sure wish I had that problem. Wish I could transplant those Pike here to Ga. But I sure wish I was back home (IL) where Iam orginally from, fishing here is not that good. The only thing good is you have a bettter chance of catching a bigger Bass and you dont have the harsh winters.

Good Luck Fishin.

 

[Brevet]

Folks

I'm killing,, killing, small pike. DEAD,, D.O. A. 3

I don't see sport in catching 18 inch pike let alone killing 4 out of 5 because of the mess they get themselves into.

I'm a believer in selective harvest and pike is a fine food. BUT
on the waters I'm talking about its a 24" limit.
I'm releasing dying fish.

I fish from 50 casts to 10 hours nearly every day from ice out to ice over.
(actually I only made about 20 casts last night when I got home but it was nearly dark and friggin cold. ebven the dog didn't want to stay out)
If I try to use a free swimming bait on the lake I live on, I could kill hundreds of small pike in a year.

I know,, Oh poor me, gets to fish all the time,,

I'll bet that as swimbait techniques get more commonly used in waters containing large populations of small pike, more and more of you will feel sorry for these little puppydogs that get KILLED when you're fishing for bass and practicing "catch and release".

If you fish a clear water lake wo many pike you must try the storm swimbaits that look like crappie, bluegill and shad. BUT
if you have a bunch of small pike,, try the ones with only a single hook. Even those though because of thier small size will be completely engulfed by the itty bitty piksters.

I friend of mine fishes exclusively for toothy critters on our lake. He throws hardware. When he catches small pike they are easily released because they can't swallow the bait. Multi hooked slow moving free swimming baits are "murder' on small pike.

 

[FishinMatt]

That really sucks, but if the lake has that many pike in it, culling the herd may not be a bad thing. I get bit off quite a bit on stickbaits because pike love to him them on the head when the bait is paused. Not much you can do with those suicidal hammer handles.

 

[FishArt]

How often do you get checked by the DNR? I've been checked here in Illinois once in my 40+ years of fishing. If I know a fish is going to die and a resource is going to directly go to waste, I keep it to eat it and I take that chance that I may get fined. I know others that do the same because we believe it's the right thing to do. DNR should have a slot anyway on pike which I believe would help solve the problem and also help weed out those lakes (like yours) that have too many little ones. That doesn't help the fishery...

 

[Maui Jim]

I agree small pike can be a problem at times when you are not targeting them or set up with the proper tackle for them. I'd try medium sized spoons like a Johnson Silver Minnow (large single barb) tipped with some kind of twister tail or just live bait (minnows and crawlers) on a regular single hook under a slip bobber. Either of these methods will nail the Bass or Pike. Then whether you get bass or pike you will be able to remove the hooks much easier without killing the fish. Actually, sounds to me like your "bass" lake is now really a "pike" lake and you need to find a new bassin spot. 8

 

[rubberfishwrangler]

I think that maybe this guy works for Storm

 

[FishArt]

Also, I'm sure you know this, but perhaps for the benefit of others I'll say it anyway. Unless the lure is down the throat (like you say), manytimes with Pike and Musky you can cut the line (or remove the leader - depending on what you're fishing with) and simply remove the lure out the gills instead of the mouth. This way the hooks (point) isn't facing the direction you're going and is much easier to "back out" vs. coming forward and out the mouth with all them hooks grabbing things. Carrying some long-nosed snips is also an option. If you can get them down there and cut the hooks as far down as you can, the fish has a much better chance of survival if there's not much of a bend left in the hook to grab onto things and just suimply release the fish with that small portion of the hook left in it...

 

[Brevet]

No I don't have any affiliation with Storm.
(They are cheap and they work!)

I don't have a problem telling people what I use or how I fish. Check my past posts.
I seldom use live bait for bass (until late fall) because I get to fish all the time. If I get skunked,, so what,,there is always tomorrow. I am still stuck in live bait syndrome for walleye no matter what Mr Stange at IF says. I use cut bait for stripers/drum/cats on Heideke,, and chum is kewl for cats. And if you ain't fished crickets for gills,,, wait until they get out of their cage and infest your boat. chirp chirp all day long.

You can put a drop shot rig in a dozen places you can't put a bobber. (Unless you have a B&M pole,, thats cheatin! and I love cheatin with a long pole!) With a drop shot or wacky senko you can fish those spots completely in 5 minutes. A person can work a hump or weed edge with a jig or texas worm completely while a live bait presentation has only touched a few spots. Wind limits the effectiveness of bobber presentations. Sorry Mick,, Its true.

Ok Humps with weeds. If its as big as a house I can do topwater, cranks, jigs etc. I will have learned what type of weeds are present, how deep they are, and what the bottom is made of. When (IF) I catch a bass, I know what was going on where I caught it. Over a full day of fishing I can hone in on what seems to work and have a chance of getiing some sort of pattern or understanding going.

I love live bait. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't fish below the KKK dam in wilmington without it. I don't bring any to Warner bridge or the Conservation area. I wouldn't think of going crappie or walleye fishing without it but i won't bring any to the Illinois for Whites and smallmouth this Friday. Oh,, I'll tell you exactly what I'm planning on Fishing the illinois friday.
I'll put in at seneca, fish the bridge and the docks with shakey worms,, head down to the water discharge and throw blade baits and traps, work front and backs of the islands with small cranks and traps work the shoreline flats and the weeds the same way, head to the marina and work the rip rap with small cranks, traps and shaky worms. I'm pretty frenetic and I like to keep moving. I'm really looking for smallies.

Since I fish alot, I get to try and learn new things. Thats one of the reasons, this whole swimbait (STORM!) thin P*sses me off. I can't practcie it.

I visit several fishing and musician forums. To often people think that there are ulterior motives for somebodies post and to often someone takes afront to a post.

This is one of the kewlest forums because that seldom happens.

I'm ranting
sorry

 

[dryfly]

Try bending down the barbs on your trebbles brother, and get yourself a long pair of hemostats. If you lose some big deal, there's always tomorrow right. Makes you a better angler and better braggin rights anyways.................. I would love to have that problem. As pike are one of my favorite fish. Where is this lake anyways..

 

[FishArt]

Brevet - you mention fishing a spot in 5 minutes - which is true to some extent. But I get to fish Apple Canyon Lake off the dock at my sisters place and we're limited to that spot. I am AMAZED at how many fish we can catch in that one spot. And what's REALLY amazing is I can cast my lure 100 times and a fish may not bite those first 99 times. I KNOW I'm dragging my lures past their noses MANY times to no avail. But, for some reason (sometimes) I think they just get irritated and finally hit it. Since then I've learned that IF you KNOW there's fish holding in a good spot (a spot that has produced in the past and you have confidence in) I hit that spot about twice as long now vs. what I use to do. Of course throwing different things as well to try to figure out what they want...

 

[TCWJoe]

I visit several fishing and musician forums. To often people think that there are ulterior motives for somebodies post and to often someone takes afront to a post.

This is one of the kewlest forums because that seldom happens.

I'm ranting
sorry

What do you play music wise? I played bass (just left my band last weekend) in a metal/hard rock/classic rock band.

It's funny, I've never heard anyone complain about catching pike before. I haven't caught one in a long time either so I have to be jealous a bit to your problem.

It sucks however that these poor animals are dying over this, but if this is just practice for getting into other places, and your doing catch and release anyhow, I agree with dry fly, try bending down, or completely eliminating your barbs. It'll make releasing the pike easier, and you'll have to work extra hard not to lose any bass.

 

[Brevet]

Fishart:

Fishing is great isn't it.
Yep,,Some little kid will be catching gills off of our dock and a bass bigger then anything I caught in weeks slams a gill they've hooked or take a#8 aberdeen with a waxie on it.

I love watching fish.
We sit on the dock and watch the rockbass/gills/bass
spawn, feed, hangout.

We'll sit with our feet in the water. They come right up and nip at you. Big carp,, cats cruising the water.
Its really quite facinating to watch them.

 

[ToddM]

Small pike can be overly agressive at times. When i take my kids to lake vermillion in june, the pike engulf evertything, they just inhale it. As was said, you can catch a 20" pike with the hooks in the gills. When i go back in august, we still catch just as many but they are hooked in the jaw.

The thing is to be prepared. Use the right hooks, have the right tools to remove the hooks, ect. You are never going to be able to save every fish from a bad hookup but just be prepared to do the best you can.