Up in Lake Wobegon country, pike that reach 20 pounds or more are commonly called gators. Today, most anglers accept the misnomer that consistent fishing for gators is confined to waters beyond the roads, somewhere deep in the Canadian wilderness. That’s a myth.

For one thing, pike grow faster here, in the lower 48 states. The North American record pike came from New York (46 pounds 2 ounces; Sacandaga Reservoir). Pike waters outside their native range, in the Western states, are coming into their own. And, with the advance of special regulations, consistent fishing for gators could easily become common enough to be found within a day’s drive from any spot in the contiguous United States.

For another thing, setting all theories and dreamy possibilities aside, consistent fishing for gators already exists. Right here. In the lower 48.

Lake Michigan

“This is no smallmouth,” I said, line blurring off the reel. I hoped it was a muskie. Filming for In-Fisherman TV on Lake Michigan in spring, with the water temperature hovering around 44°F, I hooked into something my tackle wasn’t quite ready for. Something intercepted a Rapala X-Rap on a slow roll through a shallow boulder field and made a torpedo-like run for the open expanse of the bay.

Brown trout? Steelhead? Nope. It was a 20-something northern pike. A true gator. My partner on the shoot was Tim Dawidiuk, a guide from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. He was surprised but hardly shocked. “The Door County area actually produces a lot of pigs like that,” he said. Dawidiuk once boated 7 pike over 20 pounds during a single guided trip on Lake Michigan in the northern Door County area. “About 12 years ago, over a 2-week span, we caught 15 over 20 pounds in the Washington Island area. That fishery has declined because of the dropping water levels over the past decade or so. But those same conditions have left trophy fisheries less accessible throughout the northern bays surrounding Door County, with so many ramps left high-and-dry.

“Pike are the Rodney Dangerfields of the fish world,” Dawidiuk says. “They get no respect, and we really need to protect them here. Lower Green Bay, the Fox River, and all the bays around Door County have the potential to produce trophy pike. They go out and suspend off deep structure in summer and people lose touch with them. But they can be found again in fall, adjacent to steep shores and structures close to shore. Pulling big cranks, you can successfully target gators throughout Green Bay in the fall. Pressure for pike exists in the community spots, like Washington Island and the channel of Sturgeon Bay. Those areas still produce big pike, but if you can get into the more remote bays the action tends to be hotter, and more consistent.”

The best time to target big pike in Green Bay and throughout the surrounding waters of Lake Michigan runs from August to October. “Concentrate on shoreline points and rockpiles rising out of deep water,” Dawidiuk says. “Trolling or casting deep-diving crankbaits is the best call. They’re not lone wolves. They’re in groups, though loosely associated. Find one gator and more can be found in that general area.”

Dawidiuk likes big crankbaits in fall, but not as big as you might pull for muskies. “The biggest Rapala Down-Deep Husky Jerk, the Norman DD 22, the Storm Deep Thunder, and the Rapala Deep Tail Dancer, size #11, are good examples. A large minnowbait deployed on a three-way rig is another good option. I like medium- to medium-heavy baitcasting gear holding 12- to 15-pound mono down to a steel leader. Bright colors like clown and firetiger seem to work best. When big Great Lakes pike are active in fall, they seem to be feeding in the 12- to 18-foot zone most of the time.”

Colorado

Eagle Claw Fishing Tackle is based in Colorado. Matt Smiley, sales manager for Eagle Claw, says pike fishing in his state is on fire. “Eleven-Mile Reservoir in South Park has had large pike in it for years,” Smiley says, adding the lake is about 2 hours down the road from Denver. “It’s one of the best bets for good numbers of pike running 10 to 15 pounds in Colorado. But the real pike hot-spot right now is Stagecoach Reservoir, in the northwest part of the state, near Steamboat. The state record was broken there with a fish weighing 30 pounds 11 ounces in 2006. It was only 461⁄2 inches long but very stout. The catch-and-release state record, over 31 pounds, also came from Stagecoach, so the hardcore guys are focused on that lake right now. Test nets have captured quite a few pike even bigger. The state record prior to that was 30 pounds 6 ounces, taken from Williams Fork, which is still a good lake for trophy pike though Stagecoach has overtaken it for top-end fish. Williams Fork is near Granby, about 2 hours from Denver.

“Colorado pike are different from Canadian pike in the sense that the food base is heavily dependent on stocked rainbow trout,” Smiley says. “Rainbows can make anything grow big fast. And anglers put much less pressure on these fish, too, because the population of Colorado is relatively low and the most popular fish here are trout.

“Swimbaits and big soft-plastic jerkbaits, in white or rainbow colorations, are big here. Buzzbaits take pike on top in early summer and late in fall. Jointed lures, minnowbaits, and anything that imitates rainbow trout work here. Anglers try to mimic the sizes of the most prevalent trout from the last stocking. Imitating rainbows in behavior, size, and color is the primary tactic. Pike come off the spawn hungry in Colorado, chewing heavily from ice-out through early May. In May and June they get very aggressive. Most of the pressure is centered around shallow, weedy bays at that point in the season. Almost nobody here is targeting deep or suspended pike during summer, but there is very little pressure overall. Most people target them at times of year when pike are shallow—at ice-out and throughout spring.”

Smiley adds that Taylor Park Reservoir in Gunnison County, at an elevation of about 10,000 feet, might be one of the highest trophy pike lakes in the world. “Pike in the 20-pound range are pretty common there,” he says. “At that elevation, most people are seeking trout. Conflicts exist, but we don’t really have an anti-pike sentiment. The Colorado Division of Wildlife wants to protect fish they stock, which are primarily trout, so they sometimes open lakes to indiscriminate harvest of northern pike. Pike are quickly developing a following, though, and those kinds of regs don’t sit too well with pike anglers, who are outnumbered but have some greatly under-pressured trophy pike fisheries here.”

Smiley says he doesn’t need big baits to catch big pike in Colorado. “I’m using Swim Shads or paddletails with light jigheads, but the key is always using rainbow-trout patterns. We still have guys fishing whole baitfish on quick-strike rigs. But you’re not allowed to use livebait anywhere above 7,000 feet.”

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.”

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.

“It’s unlawful to harvest any pike between 30 and 40 inches in length throughout the entire American side of Lake of the Woods,” says Rodney Pierce, fishery research biologist for the Minnesota DNR. “Anglers can keep only one trophy in excess of 40 inches. Those regulations have been in effect since 1996. In the early 1990s, the fact that big pike existed there was gaining momentum among pike fishermen everywhere. Since the regulations went into effect, the Minnesota DNR has used spring trap-netting to monitor progress, and the size of pike captured that way has been steadily increasing over time, so the regulations are showing positive results.”

Red Lake has similar regulations this year, protecting all pike between 26 and 40 inches and allowing only one trophy over 40 inches per angler. The implications are awe-inspiring. After years of monitoring one success story after another involving special regulations for muskies, we’re seeing protections put in place for big northern pike, something that should have been done a long time ago in a lot more waterways.

Big pike are critically important in maintaining populations of other fish in any lake where they exist. “It takes a long, long time for pike to reach those important large sizes, and growth rates slow down as fish get older,” Pierce says. “Big pike are too important to any fishery to be caught just once. Even normal harvest by anglers can have immediate impact on the size structure of fish in any lake. A famous and interesting study was done in Wisconsin during the late 1970s. It involved two lakes, Mid Lake and Allen Lake, side by side, in a park system. Mid Lake was closed to fishing for 15 years. The contrast between the two lakes was tremendous, the average size of pike, bass, and panfish being much larger in Mid Lake. Within a month of opening Mid Lake to general fishing, the two lakes began to look very similar again in terms of average size of all gamefish.”

Throwing larger spinnerbaits into cane lines, bulrushes, and cabbage flats that surround the shorelines of these huge Minnesota lakes during early summer provides some of the most exciting pike fishing to be found stateside. Gators can be caught shallow in summer during big wind events. Throwing Lucky Craft Pointer 128s and large Husky Jerks at windblown reefs on cloudy days can produce dynamic results. During warm, calm weather, fish flats in the 30- to 60-foot depths, right on bottom, using aggressive retrieves with 1- to 2-ounce jigs and large, straight-tailed plastics. And, out in open water, when you can locate big schools of suspended ciscoes, troll around them with mid-depth to deep-diving cranks on braided line and you’re into a big-time slime program—one of the best in the lower 48.

The potential exists, through special regs (and wetland preservation), to have trophy-pike fisheries scattered throughout every state north of the Mason-Dixon line. Those who spend upwards of $4,000 per year to chase big pike in the Far North of Canada should take note. Spend a little of that money on your phone bill. Lobby state fishery people, local fishing organizations, and local congressmen. Stump for special regulations. They work.