In the hierarchy of Esox, the chain pickerel sits squarely at the bottom both literally and figuratively. Compared to their big cousins, the pike and muskie, they don’t get much love despite being widely available across the Central and Eastern U.S. If anything, they’re viewed as a nuisance, quick to snip a lure intended for bass off your line. But their value is all relative to your mindset and tackle.
Fish gear too heavy, and pickerel aren’t much sport. In fact, your average pickerel would require the lightest trout rod on the market for you to feel the fight. But big pickerel are different. Those measuring 20 inches or better give you the same thrilling take as a pike or muskie, and on light gear put up a heck of a fight. Now is the time to catch the heaviest hitters. In the early spring, trophy chain pickerel are on the hunt and often loaded with eggs. The lack of vegetation can make finding them easier than any other time of year if you know where to look.
My friend and owner of High Octane Custom Baits, Eddie Weber, is a pickerel junky just like me. They’re one of his primary March targets in Maryland, and the goal is fish hitting the 25-inch mark or better. If you’re ready to stick a chain worthy of the wall, his tips and tricks will put you in the zone and help ensure that beast stays pinned once it hits.
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Get Your Head Out of the Creek
Chain pickerel are often associated with shallow water fishing, and that’s not an incorrect link. They thrive is skinny bogs, ponds, swamps, and creeks. There are places I fish where you can catch 50 a day in water less than a foot deep and it’s incredibly fun. The problem is that many of the areas where you find numbers of pickerel are not the same locations where you’ll find a trophy.
“You don’t need to be way up in the back of a creek to chase pickerel,” Weber says. “In fact, in the early spring, you’re much more likely to find a trophy fish in bigger water. Where we fish in the tidal zone of the Severn River in Maryland, we catch pickerel measuring up to 27 inches fairly regularly, but you’re not likely to find a fish like that in a shallow creek.”
As it goes with many fisheries, catching trophy pickerel can require you to get a bit out of your comfort zone, forgoing guaranteed bites in smaller water and going where there are fewer — but bigger — fish. If you’re already familiar with a pond, creek, or swamp loaded with pickerel, use Google Maps to figure out where these waters drain. It’s a safe bet that any larger rivers or lakes that are connected in the system will hold higher caliber fish.
Sharpen Your Edge
There’s no denying that pickerel use weedy cover to ambush prey just like their pike and muskies cousins, but in the early season, Weber has noticed he finds bigger fish in open water. That doesn’t mean weeds don’t play a role, but fishing directly in the vegetation isn’t his move.
“I focus a lot on dead and dying grass beds in the early spring,” says Weber. “During the summer, I’ll mark them on my GPS when they’re lush and green so I can go back to them in spring. What I’m looking for are beds with 4 to 8 feet of water along their edges. I think the small fish stay tucked in the cover, but the big fish are sort of roaming around and patrolling those edges.”
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A perk of targeting open water that deep is it makes it possible to use suspending jerkbaits — one of Weber’s favorite early-season lures. Later in the year, any diving lure with treble hooks runs the risk of fouling around weeds once the vegetation thickens back up. Weber also put a lot of stock in weedless soft-plastics with a spinner blade at the nose, particularly High Octane’s Weedless Trident. But whether throwing hard baits or soft, he has a rigging tip that will save you some heartbreak.
Don’t Forget the Clip
One of the most common questions I get asked about fishing for pickerel is how I rig lures to avoid bite-offs. How I answer depends on what style of lure I’m throwing. With hard lures like 4- to 6-inch jerkbaits, I tend to use 20-pound fluorocarbon leader because it’s rare that a fish will completely inhale the lure. With soft baits, however, I add a short piece of tie-able stainless steel leader as big fish are more likely to suck them in completely. But Weber skips the steel, opting instead for a 30-pound fluorocarbon leader with a twist.
“I’m a huge proponent of using tactical clips regardless of the style of lure I’m throwing,” Weber says. “I always have one on, and I’ve done some tests over the years and noticed that when I tie a lure directly to the leader, there’s a much stronger chance that a fish will swallow the whole lure and cut me off.”
Weber believes the clip adds just enough hardware to the front of his baits, in essence extending their overall length, that it makes it far more difficult for the leader to wind up in the pickerel’s teeth. It’s a trick I intend to adopt when throwing hardbaits, as there’s nothing more disappointing than seeing a big, white mouth open around your lure only to set on nothing and get a line back cut with surgical precision.
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