Springtime fishing for northern pike an overlooked opportunity

Everybody Adventures | Bob Frye
Saturday, March 19, 2016 8:30 p.m. | Saturday, March 19, 2016 8:30 p.m.

Bob Frye | Tribune-Review

Western Pennsylvania is home to just about all of the good pike waters in the state.

Bob Frye | Tribune-Review

Pennsylvania's season on northern pike is open year round. There's a 24-inch minimum size limit and a daily creel limit of two fish.

Details

Finding northern pike

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission maintains a "Pennsylvania's best fishing waters" page on its website to direct anglers to hot spots for 15 fish, from trout and bass to catfish and crappies.

Pike notably are absent.

Jason Detar, chief of its
fisheries management division, said there aren't enough "high-quality" pike waters to warrant listing.

The good news? Those that do exist are in Western Pennsylvania.

Yellow Creek Lake in Indiana County is tops in the southwest for numbers and sizes, biologist Rick Lorson said.

High Point Lake in Somerset County ranks second, he said, although the appearance of chain pickerel there is providing some competition.

Yough Dam and Cranberry Glade Lake, both in Somerset, have relatively few pike but nice ones.

Glendale Lake in Cambria County is worth a try, along with Shenango Reservoir in Mercer. There, surveys have found pike up to 38 inches, biologist Freeman Johns said.

Conneaut Lake in Crawford and Presque Isle Bay and Howard Eaton Reservoir, both in Erie, hold promise, too.

But the Allegheny River and Allegheny Reservoir in McKean are the state's best pike waters, biologist Brian Ensign said. Guide Red Childress agreed, saying the reservoir's fishing is "trending upward."

"I expect some big, big pike to be getting talked about out of there in the next two to three years," he said.

— Bob Frye

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The game was afoot quickly.

The minnow-shaped, firetiger-colored crankbait hit the water with a splash. It was a floating model, capable of running to a few feet deep.

It never got that far.

Just a few turns of the reel handle produced a strike. The first northern pike of the season, roughly 24 inches long, was on.

The fight was admittedly less than heroic early, but it ended in spastic fashion when the fish seemed to comprehend what was happening. It thrashed plenty in hand, too, making removing all those trebles from its toothy maw all the more interesting.

The next few hours produced more pike, one similar in size, the rest a bit smaller, and a handful of follows.

And the competition?

There was virtually none. Whereas even a hint of consistent action on, say, trout would lead to lots of anglers on the water, northern pike generate little buzz.

“It's funny about that,” said Freeman Johns, a biologist in the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's area 1 office in Linesville. “Even some of the musky guys don't get too excited about pike.

“They're not that different on the face of it. But the same guys who would be thrilled to catch a 36-inch musky, if they catch a 36-inch pike, they're like, eh.”

Northerns have their charms, though, and early spring is one of the best times to target them. For the next few weeks, they're as within reach of boat and shore anglers as they're going to get.

Their desire to reproduce is the reason.

Pike are among the first species to spawn each year, with the peak of activity usually coming within weeks of ice out, said Rick Lorson, the commission's area fisheries manager in Somerset. That brings them into shallow coves and bays where they can splay their eggs so they adhere to weeds.

That spawn may only last a week or so, Johns said.

Then pike — tired, hungry and eager to make up for lost time — tie on the feedbag.

“At that point, they've kind of depleted their resources, so they're looking to build that body fat back up. They're real aggressive then,” said Brian Ensign, a biologist in the commission's Tionesta office.

To catch them, Steve Scepaniak focuses on certain things. Owner of Predator Guide Service in Minnesota and a musky and pike specialist, he said the first key is finding warmer water.

“Any bay that has a black, silty bottom or a sandy bottom with a lot of weeds, that's going to heat up the fastest. And the weeds are going to give off oxygen, which attracts the whole food chain,” Scepaniak said.

Northerns, especially when they're first recovering from the spawn, are notorious scavengers, he said. So he fishes dead suckers and minnows first, right on the bottom if it's sandy, a few inches up if it's muck.

As the water warms further, he switches to live bait, then finally to lures like spoons and spinnerbaits with black bodies and orangish blades, he said.

Similar tactics work in flowing water.

Red Childress of Warren, a 20-year veteran musky and pike guide on the Allegheny River, said pike won't fight current all day like trout. They prefer slack water.

Weedy slack water is even better, he said.

“If you can find this year's green weeds, or, short of that, last year's dark, decaying weeds, they'll warm the water to the point it draws in baitfish. Even a half or 1 degree difference in temperature is enough,” Childress said. “And if you find the baitfish, you'll find the pike.”

He likes throwing lures in the 4- to 6-inch range, be they crankbaits, rubber swimbaits or spinnerbaits.

“I like bright colors,” Childress said. “Pike are more apt to hit purples and chartreuses and pinks, though they'll oftentimes hit anything, including natural-colored baits.”

Those pike — and especially the big ones — won't be around forever. Scepaniak and Childress agree that summer's arrival will push the largest specimens into deeper water, where they can be harder to find.

Right now, though, they're in close, waiting to be caught.

As to why few try, Lorson said he suspects it's a size thing. Pennsylvania pike on average can't compare to those found in the Minnesota and Wisconsin, where 20-pounders are the benchmark.

“Anything over 24 inches here is a nice pike,” Lorson said. “But we do have some nice ones, no doubt about it.”

Indeed, there's potential for the occasional giant.

Pike in the mid- to upper-40-inch mark are “fairly common” in the Allegheny River and Allegheny Reservoir in McKean County, Childress said. That latter water gave up the state record in 2003. It went 48 inches and 35 pounds.

Commission surveys of other Western Pennsylvania lakes in the past few years have revealed fish in the mid- to upper-30-inch range.

If more anglers realize that, the usually anonymous northern pike finally might get some fanfare.

“They get a bad rap. They really do,” Scepaniak said. “But really, pike are a fun fish.”

Bob Frye is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at bfrye@tribweb.com or via Twitter @bobfryeoutdoors.

Article by Bob Frye,
Everybody Adventures, http://www.everybodyadventures.com