Montana
Wyoming guide Pat O’Grady, developer of the Flutter Fish spoon, says he often makes a pilgrimage to Fort Peck, Montana, during the winter. “Last winter we were basically spooning for walleyes and lakers, but looking for anything to bite because everything’s big in Peck,” he says. “We popped a couple big northerns running and gunning, but most people were setting tip-ups for pike and we saw some of them catching fish in the 20- to 25-pound range.”
Clint Thomas, owner of Hell Creek Marina (406/557-2345), says the best northern bite on Peck is during the first two weeks in February, when pike are stocking up for prespawn. “At that point, we’re fishing big shiners and big deadbaits, like smelt,” he says. Northerns are looking for winterkilled minnows at that point, too. The Sutherland’s, Crooked Creek, Gilbert Creek, and Little Duck arms offer a pretty good chance for a trophy. You’ll probably catch only 4 or 5 pike per day, but 3 will be over 20 pounds. You don’t catch many, but it’s seldom you won’t put a big one on the ice. You don’t catch the smaller ones because there are so many giants in those areas of the system. The biggest pike I’ve caught was 27.5 pounds, but we also caught 60 walleyes over 10 pounds between mid-January and mid-February last year while watching tip-ups.
“Targeting northerns from ice-off until about mid-May offers the best pike fishing of the year,” Thomas notes. “Then it dies off for several months. You can catch them all summer, but it’s slow. The fishing picks up again around mid-September, and by mid-October it becomes one of the best big-pike fisheries in North America. The water cools off and big pike reappear out of the deep water and open-water haunts. If I wanted to catch nothing but trophy pike, I would concentrate on that part of the season.
“We’ve got a cadre of hardcore pike anglers, including the Pike Masters Club out of Billings, Montana. They slipbobber deadbaits in spring, and from May through July they pitch spoons and spinners to weedbeds and rock points. Lots of 15-pounders bite at that point of the year. In the fall they pull big crankbaits for the bigger fish, the ones that aren’t available to the average angler during summer.
“Pike have done very well in Fort Peck with no help whatsoever. In fact, they’ve been ignored or actually vilified. If we gave pike just a little help in this fishery, it would become a world-class fishery in no time.”
Other Hot Spots
“During winter, we sometimes visit a lake in the northwest corner of Nebraska called Box Butte,” O’Grady says. “The average pike is about 4 to 8 pounds, with the occasional 20-plus pounder. But there are so many 6-pounders it’s difficult to wade through them. If you drop down an active bait like a spoon, it gets eaten by a smaller pike before larger ones can reach it, most of the time. Try Box Butte in fall, though, with bigger crankbaits, and your percentages for bigger pike rise.”
