Whitefish Pike

[Maximum12]

For those of you who don't like pike, I'll be up on the Whitefish chain next week trying to weed out a few of the 18-20 guys for dinner. I love pike.

Any tips on catching pike? Seems a lot of people are catching them when trying for walleyes, so perhaps I should throw out a lindy rig with some 50 lb. test?

I know this sounds like a dumb question, but I fished Clamshell & Bertha for pike last year with spinnerbaits, rapalas, & spoons in some likely looking areas & didn't do so hot, though I spent most of my time bass fishing (great bass lakes!). I don't have this problem anyplace else in the state chasing pike, so maybe it was just a bad time window, but any leads in the right direction would be appreciated. Thanks!

[big musk411]

I caught a whole bunch on Upper Whitefish over memorial weekend. I like to troll a spinnerbait over the weeds. 4-8 fow was working for me over memorial, but you may have to move out to 8-12 fow due to weed growth. Use braided line so you can rip weeds off of your bait. The bay by the pine river is a good spot, but you should do well throughout the lake. Be sure to keep your limit!

[BoxMN]

Heck, put on blue and silver Shad Raps, the bigger the better, and get them down to about 13-15 feet in about 17-20 FOW in Lower Whitefish. It will be hard to follow the weed edge many/most of the time, but if you can especially where points or inside edges are, you will nail a bunch, and most likely some decent sized ones with many smaller mixed in. We use shallw shads on inside, shad raps next, then risto raps, then thunder sticks on our fourth line (deepest) when we are trolling with four guys. Stay on the weededge. Have fun.

[OakdaleFMR]

Last year in the Lions Fishing contest we trolled jointed Rapalas on the west shore of Crosslake from the Rush channel to the island in 15 FOW and caught over 50 in 3 hours. Unfortunately all except the three we kept were 18-23 inches, but we hooked up with doubles about 5 times. Fun fishing but not when they had to be 24 inches to keep for the tournament. Hot color was firetiger and blue/white.

[Maximum12]

Thanks for the info guys. The only thing I was doing differently last Memorial Day was depth, I was in a little shallower, probably 8-10' most of the time, so I'll move out a little further. I'm going to blame last year's bad on the phase of the moon, or the weather, or the color of my sunglasses...

Looking forward to getting out on the water tomorrow afternoon! If anyone sees a 14' Crestliner with a 25HP Merc on the back stop by & say hi.