Jim Kalkofen, Executive Director of the In-Fisherman Professional Walleye Trail, maintains a deep affection for big pike. Some of his favorite haunts are in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, around the Portage-Torch chain near Houghton. “Lots of lakes up in the Keweenaw Peninsula are connected by long channels to Lake Superior, where those big northerns can access the rich feeding flats of Lake Superior during summer, allowing those inland waters to produce a formidable giant-pike fishery in spring, fall, and winter.
“I like Lake Huron, too, beginning on Lake George of the St. Mary’s River and running all the way down the eastern shoreline of Michigan to Saginaw Bay,” Kalkofen says. “Any of the bays in that stretch can produce 12- to 15-pound fish with the occasional monster, just fishing weedlines with spinnerbaits, suspending baits, and smaller jerkbaits, like the Suick. In deeper areas, troll with crankbaits like the Super Shad Rap, or smaller baits designed for big bass, like the Rapala DT16.”
The other big-pike Mecca of the Great Lakes that Kalkofen mentions runs from Little and Big Bay de Noc south into Green Bay. “A whole series of weedbeds are scattered through that entire area,” he says. “You have to go search for them and scour them. But the nice thing is that you don’t necessarily have to use monster baits to catch monster pike on the Great Lakes. Little twitch baits and soft-plastic jerkbaits you might throw for bass work best in late spring through early summer, which is the key time to be there.”
Kalkofen also recommends Devils Lake in North Dakota, which has been rising and flooding farm fields for the past several years. “Any of the new, flooded, shallow bays are full of pike, and lots of them are in that 12- to 15-pound range,” he says. “Another great lake to try is Puckaway, near Montello, Wisconsin. Like so many lakes in that region, it’s a shallow and weedy lake, but, unlike those other lakes, 18-pound pike are fairly common there. Special regs protect them, keeping the northerns on the large side of 10 pounds. Lakes with special regs for pike are something we don’t have enough of, but it’s a great way to find trophy-pike fishing. Just go down any state’s list of protected waters and take your pick. Northerns are bound to be bigger there. Trophy lakes with control measures are the places to fish.”
Minnesota
Red Lake, and the American sides of Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake, all in Minnesota, might be among the finest pike fisheries on earth. The reasoning behind that statement has nothing to do with numbers of 20-pound pike. Though catching gators is possible and even likely at times, these lakes endured serious angling pressure for pike for many years and continued to provide exciting pike fishing for big fish without quality regulations. Now that big pike are protected in those lakes, watch out.
