early june pike?

[Guest]

Does anyone have any advice on how to best catch pike in early June in the Ely area. I'll be around the Crab Lake area, and consider myself a bit of a novice to BWAC fishing.

[Guest]

Matt,
I'm back with some more advice. First, make sure to use a leader. Pike are notorious for breaking off line. Second, remember that most Pike will be found around weeds, not rocks--if you find a point that has good weed cover, it will hold large numbers of Pike. In the BWCA that eliminates a ton of water that you don't need to fish if specifically looking for Pike. Although a lot of BWCA fisherman tend to hook pike while fishing for smallies and walleye and in-turn lose countless lures I rarely run into this problem because I fish specific areas for specific fish. If you stay near and on top of rocks and bolders, you will rarely hook a pike, unless it's a small male that doesn't know any better. For the most part, Pike love to be submerged in vegatation and ambush their prey. Because they don't eat crayfish they don't need the rocks and feel more comfortable in weeds. The only time that you may catch all species of fish in one area is in rivers or rapid type flows into lakes.

That said, Pike love fast moving baits during this of the year. The water is cold, just the way they like it. Try using daredevil spoons, large hair spinners, and large topwater baits. Because the water is still cold, you can find Pike extremely shallow, you can even sometimes see the back of Pike sticking out of the water in 12 inches of water. One deadly way to catch pike is to fish with sucker minnows in front of your campsite on a slip bobber at night. I've caught monsters using this technique. Of all the fish in the BWCA, Pike are the most aggresive and will hit almost any lure. Just look for weedy areas near deep water access and start throwing fast moving baits. To cover a lot of water you can also troll spoons and crankbaits. Good luck.

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply again, Dixon. You're a wealth of information. I wish I could make it up there more often, but I'm looking into some job possibilities in the Minneapolis area (Cargill Inc, Bio-vascular Inc) so maybe that will change. I just graduated from grad school with an MBA and my undergrad was biology/chemistry, so if you know of any openings for someone like that, let me know! (since that's not fishing related, my email is [email protected]) Back to fishing, I haven't heard much about the Walleye fishing in that area, just that it's slow. Anyone have any other Wallye info for the Crab Lake area?