"The key to presenting those baits is a jig with a long-shank hook and a big gap. One of my favorite choices is a 1-ounce football head. It falls right and really pops up and down. Football heads are designed to be dropped right to bottom and dragged, but they work fine with this big overkill, snap-jigging technique. Big round heads, giant mushroom heads, and bullet heads--most jig styles--work if the hook is right. We're talking substantial pieces of plastic, even though they're mostly long and slender, so at minimum, it requires a long-shank 6/0 hook to control the bait--give it some backbone--while retaining enough room between the point and the plastic (gap) to set the hook past the barb.
"We position the boat deep, but where we can cast into shallower water, to depths of about 10 or 12 feet. Then we work the jig down to 30 or 35 feet," Jim says. "These jigs should drop fast enough to work around a structure quickly to determine if it's the main attraction, and if not, allow you to quickly jump to the next. If you're marking big hooks below the boat, keep moving and jig vertically, right beneath the boat. In the clarity of the lakes where we've been doing this, pike can see 20 to 30 feet vertically. They can come off bottom and smash a jig right in the surface film, so a jig doesn't have to be in an area long to determine if active fish are around. I can picture lots of pike spots on the Great Lakes where this procedure would produce, too, because the water's so clear.
"Popping gators on jigs is just a gas. When you're only 20 or 30 feet away from a 20-pounder, the strike's vicious. It's definitely the most entertaining way to go, but not the only way. Spinner rigging with livebait (using a twin-hook spinner harness with a big minnow or two on a 3-way rig) works really well when fish are clustered and less active. Speed trolling deep-diving crankbaits or 3-way rigs with big minnowbaits works better when pike are scattered or where the population is thinner. And throwing heavy spinnerbaits, like the 2-ounce Ledgebuster, letting it drop and pumping it along near bottom, can be a great alternative tactic. But power snapping with big jigs is too much fun to miss.
"Snakes are flats fish," Jim emphasizes. "They might suspend 3 or 4 feet up, but I think they spend most of their time cruising along right on bottom. Sometimes they like the sharpest drops, but sometimes they're out wandering on the flat, up to a few hundred feet from the base of the structure, another reason why it's important to keep an eye on the depthfinder and to move fast. If pike are there, chances are you'll see them. We actually jigged for pike and watched them react on the depthfinder--that's how vertically we work the bait, at times. When you run out of bait and big hooks on the screen, it's time to move."
Late June is prime time along both sides of the Canadian border. Farther north, it may not happen until early July or possibly later. If the surface reading is 60F or higher, the pattern should be established. By then, the forage base and most of the larger pike have stationed in deeper grazing areas. On warm, sultry days, hunt deep. When the weather turns cool, stalk windward rocks and weeds near deep water. And the pattern persists right through fall, wherever water wolves roam deep in hungry packs. Plenty of time to power snap for big gators with big jigs and big plastics for big fun throughout the open-water season.
