Spooning with Crawler chunks

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Comment by John Sheehan on October 4, 2015 at 4:15pm

You have a n interesting problem Slip. I usually land Pickerel on mono by keeping a tight line and setting sooner butthis one towards the shallows ,picked it up and swam in the boats direction .I guess by the time I caught up reeling to the fish he had it deep enough to cut off .

Comment by Slip Sinker on October 4, 2015 at 9:47am

I fish in pike infested waters and i gave up using spoons for B'Gill. one day last season i lost $16.00 worth of spoons and tackle in one afternoon all on pike setting the hook and "nothing but air" that day i did managed to land one sole pike and it was on a vertical jig n chain dropper. that 3"inches of brass was enough to keep the line out of his mouth and slicing through the teeth. i use 20# braid on smallmouths and get bit thru all the time and those jigs were 5.00 bucks a piece. now i use minimum tackle. drop shot with hooks and split shot that are cheap when lost to a predator. when fishing for small mouth i use a cheap 1/8 oz jig head and a plastic swimbait at .40 per rig when lost  to a pred. i tried a wire leader on the bass jigs and ended up catching only pike very few SMB. obviously they shied away from the wire rig.

It’s fun spoon chuckin for gills ... but it ends up costing me in the long run. I always keep the vertical jig and chain dropper rig or a micro spoon setup in my boat on an ice fishing rod ML action with 2# braid. I test areas first by vertical jigging or casting to schools to identify the bite then resume working the area with a drop shot. These schools are usually spotted and marked on the sonar. I drop spoon or ice-jig into the school and I can usually identify if they are perch crappie or B’Gill. Last week I was drop shotting in 22 FOW to a school of B’Gill I spotted on the sonar hugging the bottom. I connected with one small BG when I felt a heavy lunge and weight hit the BG … the fight was on with a nice 36” plus pike… he let go as we were getting ready to net but not before we accounted its size.

You could reduce your chance of not losing a spoon to a pred by spotting the schools on a sonar first…. Schools intact and slowly moving thru the column usually means they feel safe and no preds around. Usually one shows up and spoils the party anyway! Ya never know. I think your chances are also greater for hitting a solitary pred such as a pike or pickerel by random casting or dropping without spotting schools of BG first.

Last winter I found a (2)YoZuri pin minnows on sale at Northwood’s Wholesale near me these are $8.00 lures retail. I rigged them with chain droppers and waxies and are extreme fish magnets. I am so afraid to use them because of the plethora of pike in my waters. I have recently been looking for economic replacements and think I have found them with a BassProShops XPS floating minnow at $4.29… still looking for cheaper though. I have caught large LMB with this setup … no northerns yet its just a matter of time

Hey Spoon Chucking it’s a great way to fish and catch em, but it just got a little expensive for me in pike infested waters. So for now I use them with caution or as school testers on my ice jig rod.

Comment by John Sheehan on October 2, 2015 at 9:36am

Now through December I'll be visiting this lake with spoons Slip . Last Year I was even able to get a Pickerel wading in December .My brother and I got Pickerel from a boat last year in November with spoons too. I 'd like to be more consistent with Big Gills though .

Comment by Slip Sinker on October 2, 2015 at 7:24am

Sounds like you have a solid pattern going John congrats...

Big mouth on that thing!