This spring has been by far the slowest start to the open water Northern Pike fishing I have seen in a long time. Water temps in some of the areas that we have been fishing have warmed up quite a bit in the past week but the fishing has not heated up. While there are fish around and some really nice size fish the numbers just are not happening.
Each day on the water we have been casting a number of different baits at the fish including soft plastics along with hair jigs and lipless rattle baits such as the Rapala Rippin Rap. In addition to casting we also run live bait rigs with succer minnows presenting them close to the bottom. I bring an assortment of live bait each day because often the fish will show a preference to a certain bait.
On Saturday we just could not get any fish to respond to our jigging presentations no matter what we threw at them. I had located a couple schools of fish that would take the live bait rigs if you worked them through the fish very slowly. As the day went on the winds really began to pick up and casting became difficult so we concentrated on fishing the live bait rigs.
I increased the weights on the rods to keep our presentations at a 45 degree angle from the boat and very slowly with the bow mount trolling motor I would keep the boat moving right through the fish and just about every time we went through the fish we would get a fish to take a bait but we had a difficult time keeping the fish on but we managed to get some nice fish in the boat and everyone had a great time catching fish and telling fish stories.
Paul Delaney
www.lateeyessportfishing.com
The big inland waters have been about the same we have been hitting up Castle Rock and Petenwell with slow days. The fish have been big though indicator that they are just getting ready to spawn. Sucker minnows off the bottom have been catching them in open water for us.