Off-beat pike baits

By Gord Ellis

Talk about pike lures and the average Ontario angler thinks almost immediately of a spoon or spinner. In many conditions, they're the most efficient baits to use. Yet pike, despite a reputation for being easy to catch, are not always on the bite. In fact, the bigger pike get, the more fussy they are. I've seen trophy pike in a negative mood spook and swim away from large spoons cast to them. I've also seen countless large pike follow a bucktail spinner, only to turn away at the last second. This is when off-beat baits can make the difference between landing a few small snakes or catching the arm-straining gators we all dream about.

Using off-beat tackle and techniques for pike doesn't mean spending a wad of cash. Many lures used for bass, walleye, and even trout, with a little modification of tackle and technique, become great pike catchers. Here are a few lures that you might not have considered using for Esox lucius.

The tube jig is the go-to bait for many bass anglers and a growing number of walleye hunters. Yet, over the years, I've hooked a lot of big pike on tubes. I've landed some of the fish, but others have just allowed me a look before severing the line and swimming off with the lure. Many of these pike came off rock reefs and sharp drop-offs, places most pike hunters don't fish. Yet, the spiralling descent of a tube jig in deeper water is a turn-on for pike.

The best pike tubes are usually from 4 to 6 inches long and very visible. White is my first choice. On many Ontario lakes, putting on a white tube practically guarantees a pike will nail it. This is not a good thing if you're fishing for bass. The 4-inch tube has a huge appeal to pike. Use it with a 3/8-ounce head with a large-gap hook and you should be in business. Toss it to the edge of a weedline and let it fall. Before it hits bottom, start swimming it back with an undulating motion.

If you think a 4-inch tube is too small, several companies make models large enough for even the most massive pike. One of the most readily available is the Lindy Tiger Tube. This monstrosity comes in both 6- and 8-inch sizes. The 8-incher is rigged with a 3/4-ounce jig head, a 6/0 hook, and a 3/0 treble trailer hidden in the tail. The 6-inch tube includes a 5/8-ounce jig, a 6/0 hook, and 2/0 treble trailer. The Tiger Tube is even large enough to be fished without a weight in shallow water. Just Texas rig it with a suitable-sized worm hook.

Using large plastic baits like the Senko or Sluggo for pike fishing is a bit more common than tube fishing, but still practised by few anglers. However, following a cold front, when pike are often negative, there's no better way, outside of using dead bait, to catch them.

The Sluggo and its offshoots look somewhat like giant stretched-out slugs. Four- to 6-inch models are great to cast. They work well Texas rigged with a worm hook. Sluggos can be modified for pike by adding a No. 6 treble to the worm hook at the elbow where the hook point is reinserted into the bait. It will greatly increase your hookups. This technique is especially good when pike are in sandy bays where there's little vegetation. If the weed is thick, the small treble will foul with greenery.

Favourite Sluggo colours for pike are white, red, and bubble gum, mostly because they're highly visible. A lot of my best Sluggo fishing has been on big pike holding in shallow, clear water. This is largely sight fishing. You cast to them and wait for the strike. Sluggos rarely spook shallow pike, and I've seen these fish churn the water trying to suck them up when everything else has been ignored. If pike need to see the lure moving, just a few soft pulls on the rod will bring it to life.

The Sluggo works best unweighted. Run a 12-inch thin-wire leader on it or any plastic bait, as pike tend to inhale them. The Senko and its various knockoffs are fished slowly and with little movement, much like the Sluggo. The Senko, however, has a more worm-like look. With one, I take a No. 4 Octopus hook or a treble (if it's not weedy) and hook the worm through the nose. The Senko is a do-nothing bait. Cast it out into a likely looking pike hole and allow it to sink slowly. Watch for the line to tighten when a pike hits. In weeds, you might want to use a weedless single hook with this bait. More natural-looking colours like black, smoke, and red shad have been better for me when fishing a Senko.

Large crankbaits are popular pike baits, but sometimes small crankbaits - 2.5- to 4-inch stuff used for bass, walleye, or trout and fished with spinning gear - slay big pike. Many years ago, I first experienced the small-crankbait pike phenomenon while fishing with Thunder Bay writer Russ Swerdlyk.

We were on a lake near Sioux Lookout and had been tipped off by a lodge owner that trolling small cranks like the No. 5 and No. 7 Shad Rap, Fat Rap, or a similar Cotton Cordell Shad would do the trick for muskie. Heeding all the advice we could get, we dutifully trolled our little cranks tight to deep weedlines. We caught muskie - to our utter amazement - and a few fat bass, but the pike went nuts chomping on our cranks

In fact, the smallest one we ran, a No. 5 perch Shad Rap, caught many of the largest pike. I can only assume that they were feeding on small perch. At the time, we were using medium-weight spinning gear and 10-pound-test line. This was barely manageable for most of the fish we caught, but some large pike dove into the cabbage and broke off or wrapped up so badly that we had to snap the line. I wonder if our luck wouldn't have been better if we'd been using the braided lines that fill many of our modern spinning reels today. Braid is better in weeds than mono.

Anyway, since that experience back in the mid-1980s, I've caught many more big pike on a variety of small cranks, including the Wally Diver, Rapala Tail Dancer, Hot N' Tot, and Storm Thin Fin. I've caught pike on them by trolling, as well as casting, especially over shallow weed flats where big pike cruise for food. While small crankbaits are not my first choice for pike, when the bite gets tough, they always get a chance to prove themselves.

I'll admit that a spinnerbait is not as off-beat a pike bait as a Senko or tube. Talk to any largemouth angler who spends time working blades through the weeds and you'll learn pike like a spinnerbait perhaps a bit too much. Oddly enough, the spinnerbait is not considered the classic pike bait that a bucktail spinner or spoon is. Yet, I'd argue that it's more versatile and often more attractive to pike. A spinnerbait is also easier to fish in cabbage beds and reed stands that big pike like to hang out in.

I admit that I come to this piece with a soft spot for spinnerbaits. Years back, on a canoe trip with my dad, Gord Sr., I caught my first truly giant pike on a spinnerbait. Dad and I were fishing for walleye below a rapids on the Albany River system when an enormous pike took a swipe at one of our twister jigs. I quickly grabbed a second rod rigged with a white 1-ounce spinnerbait and chucked the big-bladed lure towards the base of the rapids, started to reel it in, and was fast to a big fish. We had quite a time battling that pike and even more fun hand landing it in a 16-foot canoe. Luckily, the pike was well hooked by the single 2/0. Before releasing it, we marked the fish's length on my paddle. Back home, the tape read just over 44 inches. It was many years before I topped that huge pike.

Last year, almost 20 years later, I was back on the Albany, this time fishing for pike on Makokibatan Lake. While I threw several lures for pike, the most successful by far was, you guessed it, a 1-ounce spinnerbait.

While there is an ever-increasing number of large pike and muskie-sized spinnerbaits on the market, I prefer 1- to 1.5-ouncers that are more typically used for bass. You can fish a spinnerbait of this size on a 7-foot flipping stick and 20-pound braid or 15-pound monofilament.

Countless options are available to the spinnerbait angler, including size, number and type of blade, dressing, and colour. I recommend keeping it simple. White, chartreuse, orange, and yellow work well for pike.

For extra action, add a 3- to 4-inch white twister body to the main hook. A second single stinger hook is also a good idea on spinnerbaits, and, as with all pike lures, make sure you use a quality steel leader.

Some spinnerbaits have open eyes that make using traditional steel leaders tricky. Here's a solution. Cut rubber surgical tubing into small pieces and slip one over the tie-on gap in the middle of the spinner arm. This will create a pocket to keep the leader clip from sliding up the spinner arm. You'll have to replace the surgical tubing over time, so keep a few pieces handy in your pike box.

For blades, I prefer double Indianas for 80 per cent of pike spinnerbaiting. They provide a lot of pulse and flutter and ride well above weeds. If pike are deeper, consider a single blade. However, if you want to bulge the lure just under the surface, use one with Colorado blades.

Spinnerbaits can be cast or trolled. If you're trolling through weeds, keep a relatively short line and work the lure with your rod as it ticks through the greenery. If you get snagged, pop the rod forward and the lure should break free. When casting into weeds, point the rod tip directly at the lure and reel it straight though the slop. Spinnerbaits are amazingly weedless when retrieved this way.

In cold water, trolling a white spinnerbait with a sucker or chub on the main hook is an excellent way to entice slow-moving pike to bite.

When pike are holding off sunken islands or around drop-offs, let the spinnerbait helicopter towards bottom before starting to retrieve. This trick works for big pike and muskie. Fishing for pike is unpredictable at the best of times and demands that the angler keep an open mind. If your regular techniques aren't working, don't be afraid to switch. Adding these off-beat lures and tactics to your arsenal will help you get slimed by a big gator more often this summer.