Fishing For Chain Pickerel

[Luca Pfeffy]

I live Annapolis, I have been fishing in Weems Creek (brackish, tide water, spring water) for pickerel for the past week. Fished about 5 times, 3 hours each time, fishing along the shores of grassy, clear areas with various small spoons, spinners, and jigs with no luck. Its been high tide all of the days, I was wondering if that had something to do with it or if am I just having REALLY bad luck? PLEASE HELP

[Yak Fish]

Our March meet and greet was in the severn. Posted there are hotspots you should check out as well as lures and tactics. Do a search and you'll find several hits on the topic. A few of us, including myself, were able to catch our first pickerel.

The pickerel master on these boards (no offense to others I don't know about) is J.A. Veil. Seek him out and he'll be able to tell you all you need to know. If you're fortunate enough to fish with him, you'll learn even more.

I believe the season is closed for pickerel at the moment, until May 1. As such J.A. would probably prefer that you dont fish for them while they are spawning, but I dont want to put words in his mouth. He'll give you good reasons one way or the other.
Good luck!

[J.A. Veil]

I believe the season is closed for pickerel at the moment, until May 1. As such J.A. would probably prefer that you dont fish for them while they are spawning, but I dont want to put words in his mouth. He'll give you good reasons one way or the other.
Good luck!

Yak Fish is correct. The pickerel season is closed from March 15 to April 30 to allow spawning. I have never checked with DNR to see if a closed season means: a) no intentional targeting allowed; or b) you can target them, but not keep them. My personal position is to leave them alone for 6 weeks and let them spawn.

From my winter pickerel fishing for the past six years, plus my tutelage from the legendary Magothy pickerel master, Virgil Poe, pickerel are relatively easy to catch from November through March, once you find where they are. (I caught pickerel in Weems several times last winter. But they are not everywhere. It takes a lot of searching to find the 10-20% of shorelines where they can be found. Your recent experience may have focused on areas that looked fishy, but actually held no fish.)

From April to October, I have caught only a few pickerel here and there while perch fishing. Virgil's opinion is that during the warm weather, pickerel have plenty of natural food to eat and are rarely tricked into hitting lures. But during the cold weather months, the natural food is scarce -- so they hit bait and lures readily. I tend to stay away from the locations where I caught them during the winter until early May.

Just as a heads up, there are loads of shorelines in Weems that will hold white perch all summer and fall. They have not moved in yet -- that should happen by late April or early March. You can have lots of fun catching perch from your kayak.

[Luca Pfeffy]

Thank you! I've fished on the creek for about 10 years now and I know how to catch everything but pickerel.. Thank you though. I have only recently targeted the larger fish in the creek, like the pickerel. Thank you for the pointers though!

[perchy]

Have you tried chartreuse plastic grubs or spinner baits?