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What bait are you using, and where are you located? Here in central MN, pike will spit out a hooligan, yet gobble a frozen sucker almost as readily as a live one.
Here in MN the laws are really screwed up. Hooligan is basically a sea smelt. I've heard up north as in alaska and some places they work fine. Around here, they don't at all. Every single flag I got the pike spit it out in no time. Back before these AIS laws, regular lake smelt was dynamite on pike. If you were using shiners, as in the little 3" ones, thats your problem. It seems pike will eat a bigger dead bait than live bait. That's saying a lot, as I have caught a pike on a live 3 pound bass, on accident of course.
I fish with frozen smelt for pike, and if the pike aren't biting the smelt itself I will sometimes hook a minnow through the tail one one treble hook and put a smelt on another hook from the treble. I believe this adds a little more movement to the dead smelt.
I fish lots of deads for pike and do pretty well. Here in WI it used to be all smelt until the trout/salmon took the GL population down to the point of near extinction. I switched to bloater chubs before that happened and actually liked 'em better. Cheaper, better profile and oilier. Guess what? Not many of them left either. Few years back I got some lake herring from Superior. Pretty big stuff, the smallest was about 12" and the biggest was like 15". Still caught fish... Last year I used mackerel from the Asian grocery, still caught fish. I've said before, I'll say it again. Pike are pretty shameless creatures and good locations trump any presentation tweaks every time.One of my secrets is the Windlass tipup. Yup, very labor intensive to maintain in bitter cold but down to 10 F or warmer they are the ticket to better catches with dead bait. Gotta have a breeze, but gently bobbing dead bait is an attraction you just have to experience. I'm still trying to work on how to use the presentation in colder temps but it has eluded me.WI regs say we gotta keep our deads "preserved in a manner that does not require refrigeration or freezing", that means salt and lots of it. Since I've been following the letter of the law my dead catches have actually increased and if they changed the law today I'd be hard pressed to go back to straight frozen.Also monkeyed a bit with food colored bait but haven't had enough confidence in it to form an opinion one way or the other.As usual, just my opinions based on my experiences, UMMV....
i use a drop shot type rig to keep bait up off bottom a bit. stuff a bit of sponge in the mouth(or put on hook) soaked in power bait. i dont have a windless yet but love the concept. with the windless i would add some small willow blades for flash. maybe even a worm rattle too for even farther attraction.
Still experimenting with scents myself and so far haven't found a fool proof one. But blood is a different idea. I usually try and put back a lot of my pike to fight them again another day but some just are not that lucky do to an odd hooking etc. So one thats on the ice due to that might be a good one to experimental tool!Thanks again guys for all your thoughts! I haven't had much luck with scents so far but I don't give up easily. This year I plan on buying a bottle of smelt oil attractant to see if that helps with bringing them in on slow days.One thing I've noticed is that if I catch a pike and it bleeds a bit, the bloody minnow seems to be deadly. I've had pike take them before I even get the tipup set back in the hole. Now I'm toying with the idea of trying to get some beef blood from a butcher shop and formulating my own attractant out of it.
I did something today, that I never thought I'd attempt.... and it (of course), did not work.I attempted to put a piece of a canned Sardine on the exposed barb of my treble - which had a 7" sucker on it.After 3 + decades on the ice, sometimes your mind wanders....
One of my secrets is the Windlass tipup. Yup, very labor intensive to maintain in bitter cold but down to 10 F or warmer they are the ticket to better catches with dead bait. Gotta have a breeze, but gently bobbing dead bait is an attraction you just have to experience. I'm still trying to work on how to use the presentation in colder temps but it has eluded me.
I agree that having a dead bait move can make a huge difference. This is why I aggressively fish my tip-ups. Every 10 minutes or so I'm walking around lifting them up about a foot and setting them back down. Keeps the bait moving, holes don't freeze shut... I prefer to keep my holes covered regardless of temperature. That beam of light shining down a hole onto a lifeless bait is unnatural looking to anything swimming below. 35 degrees above or 35 degrees below, holes are covered. Another trick I employ is to drill another hole not far from my dead bait sets, maybe 10-15 feet away, and walk around with my pike jigging rod and spend a minute or two at each of those 2nd holes jigging a one ounce rattle bait. After watching on camera how winter pike react to a jigged rattle bait it made this a necessary tactic. Call stuff into the area with a rattle bait, they linger for a bit, dead bait is lifted a foot, a minute or two later a flag goes up. Rinse and repeat.
Well this way you will definitely always be doing some I have implied the extra ice holes to jig an attractor jig to call in fish but have never really thought to move the dead bait themselves very often. I typically fish really shallow though so I don't often cause much foot traffic around my tip ups in fear that the foot traffic would scare off potential pike.
I also have been jigging for pike the past four years with good results and I just keep "broadening the horizons". It's cool stuff.