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Live bait Fish in the weeds and you will have all the pickerel you want.
Shallow weed flat before a drop off....check them often ...they hit after a check quite often.
Sweet, that's easy. How deep do you set the bait? And does jigging work at all?
I think a better question would be...how do you NOT catch pickerel :p
If you really want to hook one on the jigging rod... tie on your most expensive tungsten jig and say goodbye! For some reason I can land ~50% of the pike that bite a panfish jig, but pickerel always cut the line. Sometimes the line just goes slack and you never even see a bite.
I can tell you from my experience they aren't line shy at all. I've caught them with no leaders what-so-ever, I've caught em on mono, I've caught em on wire leaders, they are not "pick"y with regards to hook size, line color, etc.
Caught this episode of TGO the other day that is relevant to your interest: http://www.tgofishing.com/portfolio/episode-27-breakin-the-chains-vermont/ They go tip up fishing for Pickerel in VT.
pickerel like any type of transiton zones. Grass to mud flats or the shallow side of drop offs are my favorites. They like to hide in the grassy stuff and rocket out to grab prey as it moves along the edges.Pickerel are great eating fish, one of my favorites. Once I learned how to remove the y bones I couldn't get enough. I will keep any legal pickerel I catch. I could never understand why guys don't like them and kill them for no reason. Wasteful. Even if you don't want to remove the y bones, just grind them up for patties. Gooood patties I don't trap fish much, most of my catches are jigging. And yes, they will steal jigs. I have some light 4" steel leaders that I use when I want to target pickerel. They don't even notice it. Use anything with flash and a lot of movement. You'll pick up some bass with this set up too and crappies sometimes.