Pickerel lures & plastics?

[brianisoutside]

What are you guys using for pickerel?
Are 1/4 - 1/8 jig heads with 2-4" paddle tails the norm?
Any color recommendations?


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[Donsail68]

When fishing at Deep Creek Lake, my most productive lure is a rapala jerk bait. The pickerels seems to like them.

[Mark]

These are my "go-to" pickerel lures and flies:

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Each has actually been "tasted" by a pickerel.

The lures are both 1/8 oz. jigs. One is a spinner the other is a 3 inch paddletail. I run the spinner and the paddletail over grass or try to keep it just off the bottom. A 1/4 oz. lure would be too heavy for the shallow areas I fish and would hang up on vegetation or get fouled by the mud on the bottom.

The flies are a Clouser Minnow and a foam popper.

The rule of thumb for picks supposedly, is yellow and/or white. But I have yet to find a spinner color combination that a pickerel will not hit when they are aggressive. I've successfully used spinners with bucktails that are black, white, red, orange, pink, yellow, green or brown.

Occasionally, I will follow the common convention of bright day, bright lure. Dark day dark lure. When they're active, that doesn't matter. And I must say the Severn tidal pickerel have been less than active of late.

I have no idea what they think a blue popper represents but they will hit it. This is not the best photo but if you look closely you can see the blue popper deep in this pickerel's mouth:

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They also like Clousers. This is the same Clouser that is in the first photo above:

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[brianisoutside]

Ok thanks mark


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[J.A. Veil]

Nearly all of my pickerel fishing is done in the Severn creeks and tidal ponds. I devote a section of my book to pickerel fishing. Here is how I fish for them. Other techniques and tackle may work better when targeting pickerel in lakes -- hopefully someone with more freshwater experience than me can weigh in.

Pickerel will go after a variety of lure types. In most years (note that this fall is an anomaly -- the Severn pickerel have taken a vacation) the pickerel in the Severn creeks and ponds lie in shallow water near structure (fallen wood, grass, dock pilings). I throw 1/8-oz jigheads using Gulp twistertails or 3" fat paddletails, or 1/8-oz spinnerbaits (Woody's feather spinner or Bignose spinner). Inline spinners, like Mepps, and small crankbaits also are effective on pickerel. As I note later in this reply, I no longer use treble hooks, so I stopped fishing with Mepps lures and do not use crankbaits.

The Severn pickerel bite is usually strong on artificial lures until early December. At that point I switch over to a live minnow on a 1/8-oz jighead. A common old-time method of pickerel fishing is floating a minnow under a bobber. This does catch fish, but without having constant contact with the line, it gives the pickerel time to swallow the minnow and get gut-hooked (often fatal). I treat the live minnow like a plastic tail - I cast it out and retrieve it.

Since most pickerel fishing is done in the winter, the water temp is cold, and the cold-blooded pickerel will have slower reaction time. I try to keep the minnow moving through the water at a slow speed without hitting the bottom (this allows the hook to pick up slime off the bottom). If I am in very shallow water (<18") I may downsize to a 1/16-oz jighead to keep the bait off the bottom.

When pickerel bite in warm or cool weather, they often slam the lure and may jump. In the cold of winter, that happens rarely. Typically I will be retrieving slowly and feel a light tap on the line. Or I may feel additional weight. In either case, I raise the rod tip. If there is a fish there, this causes some head shaking. Some days pickerel are tentative -- they grab my minnow, hold it in their mouths without biting down hard, and swim away. After a few fierce head shakes, they open their mouths and release the unharmed minnow.

I fish 10-lb braid on my ultralight and light pickerel rods. This is heavier than necessary, but it gets the job done. I strongly recommend adding a leader. This avoids breakoffs and gives something to grab before lifting the pickerel in your kayak. I use 20-lb mono (because I have a large spool in my garage) -- you could probably go lighter. When you get a fish to boatside, here is my recommended technique for picking up the fish, unhooking it, getting a photo or measurement if desired.

1) Wind the line in so you can grab the leader. Slide your hand down the leader until you can grab the lure. If you are worried about the teeth, stop a few inches above the lure.
2) Grab the pickerel with your hand around the body (like grabbing the barrel of a baseball bat). Try to get just behind the gills, but do not put your fingers in the gills -- that will harm the fish.
3) Most pickerel caught while casting and retrieving have the hook in their jaw. Once you have hold of the fish's body, you should be able to pop the lure out with your fingers or pliers. Try to be as gentle as possible when poking a tool in their mouth. Occasionally the lure/bait will be in the inner jaw (but not the gut). I recommend carrying a jaw spreader tool that allows you to prop open the mouth for quick hook removal.
4) If the fish is small or medium in size, drop the fish back in the water. If the fish is large or you really want a photo, have your camera ready so you can get your photo quickly and return the fish to the water.
5) After you have caught your first few pickerel, you should get a sense of how long they are. After that point, you can eyeball the fish and estimate its length without picking it up and laying it on your measuring board.

Lures with treble hooks - I am not a fan of any lure that employs treble hooks, especially those with multiple trebles. They do catch fish, but often cause serious damage to the fishes' mouths. Although pickerel have a bunch of sharp teeth, the skin around their jaw area is thin and tears easily. A small barbless J-hook can be popped out easily -- not so with a treble hooked lure. Trebles also create more opportunity to hook the angler or their clothing. Since most pickerel are released, there is no reason to use trebles when you can catch pickerel just as well with J-hooks. (I now step down from my soap box).

[Mark]

I have used crankbaits with treble hooks. Any minnow imitation crankbait will work -- small X-Raps and small Rat-L-Traps. However, I agree with John. The trebles can be problematic for you and the fish. I also believe that pickerels will spit a crankbait with trebles back at you faster than any other lure or fly. I don't know if it's the angle of the hooks or perhaps their size, or maybe the hardness of the crankbait's body, but I definitely get more solid pickerel hookups with a single hook lure or fly than when I used crankbaits with trebles.

[bunnielab]

I have caught a surprising number of pickerel as bycatch while fishing for LBMs this year. A few hit soft flukes or other plastics, but most of them hit hard jerkbaits or swimbaits. John and Mark are both correct in that it is very hard to remove a trebled hooked lure from a thrashing, razor toothed, slime covered fish. I have already started replacing the trebels on my smaller inline spinner and cranks with single hooks but am thinking about doing the same too all of my bass lures (other than topwaters I think) over the winter. I have found an UK-based tackle shop that carries a great selection of the Cox & Rawle inline replacement hooks and even has reasonable shipping. The only lures that I think will be trouble are suspending jerkbaits, but I have a accurate reloading scale and will try to match the hook weights as best as I can.

The real struggle will be teaching my clumsy fingers to tie tiny little skirts onto the hooks replacing dressed trebles on my small inline spinners. I have maybe two dozen of them still in the package from various sales and I would like to use them all up before I dip my toe into making my own from scratch.

[Mark]

Here are two Rapala crankbaits with Cox and Rawle in-line hooks. I found the hooks on eBay.

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Both of these lures have caught pickerels in their present configuration.

[bunnielab]

Here are two Rapala crankbaits with Cox and Rawle in-line hooks. I found the hooks on eBay.

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Both of these lures have caught pickerels in their present configuration.

I have a few small lipless cranks from Sebile that I have put single hooks on. About a month ago I was at Gilbert Run scout it out for kayaking next year and ended up catching a little over a dozen rainbow trout on both colors I had with me. I was catching them all over the lake, I have never experienced anything like it. I had hoped to give them a go at some pickerel at the december meet.

[mike o]

I won't use treble hooks either. I use various different swim baits. I caught a nice fish on a zoom super fluke today. I like green color the best. I also like tony accetta's if fish are aggressive.

[Mark]

I have a few small lipless cranks from Sebile that I have put single hooks on. About a month ago I was at Gilbert Run scout it out for kayaking next year and ended up catching a little over a dozen rainbow trout on both colors I had with me. I was catching them all over the lake, I have never experienced anything like it. I had hoped to give them a go at some pickerel at the december meet.

You should also try single hooks on your topwater baits. They work fine.

[bunnielab]

You should also try single hooks on your topwater baits. They work fine.

Yea, I am sure it will come with time, but right now I do debarb them which I sometimes think, for LMBs at least, makes it almost as easy to release them as a single barbed hook. Most all of the LBMs I have caught on topwaters are only hooked by a single point on one of the hooks and even the smallest of them has a large enough mouth that I can quickly get my pliers in there and release a barbless treble if they happen to engulf the entire hook. All my brackish stuff has gone single hook as small perch seem to have an amazing ability to get all three points of even the largest of trebles into their mouth and they are too small to dehook easily.