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Posts: 154
| Some on you may have remembered I had a post on here for some help catching bigger pike on my home lake that is very iron stained and weeds don’t grow past 7ff. Well I didn’t really figure that out but I did figure out how to cat chi the walleyes as they were in weeds and I never even thought about fishing weeds for them. But while fishing these shallow weeds for walleyes my buddy was with me and saw a high 30 low 40in fish follow his leech to the boat. My other buddy’s were out on the lake and claimed to have two other fish around this size follow there spinnerbaits in to the boat from weeds in about 5-7ft of water. A lot of you told me to target deeper water and try catching them suspended which I never got around to trying, but would it be possible the big pike in this lake stay shallow because of the walleyes in the shallow water and due to the fact it’s very stained and weeds don’t grow past 7ft? Just a thought. I didn’t really believe them when they told me because I didn’t think mid summer fish of that size would be so shallow but I would like to hear you’re guys input. This is Big Sandy Lake if that helps. Edit: would also like to say I did catch one around 15lbs from about 3ft of water ice fishing but that’s ice not open water.
Edited by MNFisherman 1/30/2020 8:12 AM
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Posts: 309
| They'll come up to the shallow weeds to feed. I don't think they stay long, and don't know what conditions trigger it, but I've caught a few 40+ pike from shallow weeds in mid summer while musky fishing. Walleyes will do the same and I've met a few walleye jiggers that rarely leave the weed beds. |
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Posts: 2276
Location: SE, WI. | If their chasing your leeches in, it sounds like a perfect scenario to fish some black plastics. Either lizards or Fandangos on swim bait hooks, or light jig heads....1/4-3/8 th oz. in that shallow water! JD |
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Location: Neapolitan Chain Of Lakes | Just my 2 cents. It is absolutely possible and sounds probable on your lake for the pike even big ones to be shallow in mid summer. If your username is where you're fishing in MN how warm is the mid summer water? Maybe 75-76 in most years? Obviously higher some years but last year was pretty cool so absolutely a big fish can be shallow the entire warm water season and especially if they have cover like thick weeds to provide shade/cover. If it holds preyfish, has good oxygen, and they are comfortable (Some studies show they prefer 67-72 water temp) with cover and without threats then they are there. I have a sinking digital thermometer that reads at 5 foot increments and I would bet the water is at least 3-5 degrees cooler 5 feet down and a little bit more beyond 5 feet and under weed cover. My guess would be at least 7 degrees cooler in the situation you explained. This would put the temp in their preferred zone with food and oxygen so.......Possible they could be there because of walleyes but based on all the stomach contents research I've read on pike their stomachs mostly contained panfish, bullheads, (Cisco on certain lakes), and shiner minnows size appropriate. And of course that would depend on the preyfish available in your particular lake but I would put my money on that there is also panfish, bullheads, etc. in those weeds so it's attracting the walleyes and the northerns and everything for that matter. You had a follow on a leech which could be a clue so like JD said black plastics sounds great so if he was doing that then I would try a larger offering and would try a big musky size black spinnerbait dropped down low in the weed pockets and slow roll it low in the weed stalks if you can. Depending on how thick the weeds are you could also patiently work almost any style lure thru the weeds so if they are cabbage style weeds you can work a suick, a crankbait, or even a topwater if the surface isn't weed choked. Try multiple approaches for example just bump the weeds and then slow work it thru, or crash the stalks hard, back off, and then crash em again, or just tickle the tops of the weeds underwater. If the weeds are super thick work the very edge of the weed wall on the deep water side and on down especially in mid summer. My bet is those pike might be eating bullheads so like Henry Ford said "You can have any color you want as long as it's black!" Wow I really went ba%$s deep on that one sorry that was more like tree fiddy than 2 cents. Oh and of course next year they'll be deep feeding in a different manner. |
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Posts: 762
| I remember your thread last year. Esox 109 was very thorough in his response. Another tactic to try and that depends on weed thickness, but also include , and I know it is old school. but a 1/2oz. or 3/4oz. Johnson silver minnow, tipped with a 3 or 4 inch grub and I think you will be in business! Kdawg |
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Posts: 1311
| What kdawg said. Very effective technique. Also those weedless Rapala spoons if they still make them. |
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Posts: 20230
Location: oswego, il | Pike love glidebaits too. Throw them. As long as the water doesn't get too warm the pike will be there. |
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Posts: 224
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | I fish for big pike more than I do musky, my goal is to get the catch an release record for pike in mn. This fall I got a 44.5 and a 42 in a lake that only gets 15 feet deep. I only mostly target them in spring and fall due to the fact I really don’t want to kill a record size fish due to the water being 80+ degrees. My best pieces of advice is to fish slow and pick weed beds apart meticulously. My favorite body of water is a reservoir with two main bays with creeks flowing in. These bays are no more than 8 fow and have very few variations in depth. With a situation like this where most of the water is similar bottom wise, big fish really relate to small depth variations when they are shallow. The spot where I caught both of my pike over 40 this year is an 5-6 foot channel that is surrounded by 3-4 fow on either side. The deeper trough has very scattered weeds while either side is much more heavily weeded. It doesn’t have to be deeper water, generally if you can find an area like I described with a gap in the weeds, it most likely has a pike in it. Generally all of my biggest fish come from the deepest, cleanest, and biggest trough that is surrounded by weeds. This is different from fishing a deep or shallow weed edge, those spots obviously can have big fish on them but I find big ones to relate to these channels in the weeds much more often. When you find an area like this, keep hitting it. Really similar to fishing a good musky spot, if you keep hitting it there’s going to be a big one there at some point. Almost all of my big fish come when I’m fishing slowly. For more heavily weeded areas my top baits are a heavy duty swim jog in 3/8 oz like a dirty jigs no jack swim jig, and the other being a keitech fat swing impact 4.8-6.8 on a owner beast weedless Swimbait hook, usually 1/8 or 1/4 oz. Both of these are super weedless and allow me to creep the bait as slow as possible. For fishing in the middle of the channel where there aren’t many weeds my choices would be either a 4-6 inch phantom softail, a river2sea s waver 168, or a bass style jerkbait like a husky jerk. For the hard baits it’s important to use a light titanium leader to get as much action as possible, for the jig/swimbait I use 60-80 lbs floro. Your not fishing for musky, you don’t need big baits to catch big pike. I think big pike are pretty lazy, especially if it’s a pressured fishery, so I don’t catch many of fast moving straight retrieve baits. I’m more obsessed with true trophy pike than I am with musky so if you want some more specifics shoot me a message I’d be happy to help |
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Posts: 32892
Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | I fish shallow a lot, and search out dark water systems with good tobacco or regular cabbage, especially love flowages. Big pike on those waters are slop related a lot. Some of my best have come from 3' of water in August. Doesn't have to be tannin, either, as Wabigoon witnesses.
Biggest Pike I have ever seen there. |
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Posts: 224
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota | sworrall - 1/30/2020 9:44 PM
I fish shallow a lot, and search out dark water systems with good tobacco or regular cabbage, especially love flowages. Big pike on those waters are slop related a lot. Some of my best have come from 3' of water in August. Doesn't have to be tannin, either, as Wabigoon witnesses.
Biggest Pike I have ever seen there. for me the best pike fishing of the year is right when the water begins to cool but is still warm, which here In southern mn is late August early September, so much fun. The lake I was talking about in my previous post is a dark water slop filled fishery, something about that type of water supports so much forage and makes some monster pike |
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Posts: 612
| Gaint pike can live in some very shallow lakes. This is generally the exception, but it happens. I believe the lake requires either cool water springs or cold water year long creek discharge (at least in the 2 cases I've encountered). Both lakes were in Canada. However once the water warmed to 70, any thing > 5 lps disappeared until fall. 2 out of the 4 biggest pike I've seen were caught in these smaller lakes and they only had a max depth of 12', very tainic with weed growth to only 5'. Not sure if this helps, but at least it lets Y know that others have caught giant pike in very shallow lakes. |
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Posts: 1249
Location: Walker, MN | Late August into September has been good to me as well. When you find one good fish, there can be 10 good pike in a very small area. An area of very thick shallow weeds that has a steep drop right up to it can be gold. |
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Big Pike Shallow water.