Fishing for northern pike from the shore can be an exhilarating experience, requiring keen observation and strategic angling.
Understanding the behavior of these predatory fish and knowing where to find them along the shoreline can significantly enhance your chances of success.
Let’s go over the most important things of how to catch pike from shore.
As with any species of fish, pike like to hang around cover and other unique areas of the lake or river to ambush prey.
Of course, you can catch pike in open water, but when limited to the shore, you really want to target these areas to maximize your fishing success.
Northern pike are notorious for cruising grass lines in search of unsuspecting prey.
Also, pike’s unique color perfectly camouflages them against the vegetation which allows them to be incredibly effective hunters among the weeds.
These areas are a bit harder to find when fishing from shore. You most likely don’t have any kind of sonar to get a visual of the depth subsurface.
However, by dragging a jig or sinker along the bottom, you can feel when there is steep ledge.
Pike love to hang out just off these ledges and hide in the deeper water. When prey drops down, they are waiting in the depths to attack.
Contrary to ledges, points are very easy to spot. These are pieces of land or bank that stick, or point out into the water.
No matter what species of fish you are targeting, points always hold fish and should be an area of focus.
Coves are kind of like inverted points. And they were always my favorite places to fish as a child.
I never had a boat or kayak, so I got a lot of experience fishing from shore.
And coves always seemed to catch me more pike than any other places in the pond, river, or lake.
Shore fisherman are obviously restrained to one fishing location.
We don’t have the luxury of driving our boats or paddling our kayaks around to find the pike.
So it is best to time bank fishing trips so that you can find pike when they are shallowest.
When the temperatures are high and the sun stays in the sky longer, pike prefer to stay out of the shallows during mid day.
The will either swim out deep or hold very tightly to structure in order to stay cool.
During the warm months of the year, it is best to fish during the morning and evening hours if you are restricted to the shore.
This way, you can maximize your fishing time. During these hours, pike will be up shallow and feeding very aggressively.
From the late fall to the early spring, pike behavior is essentially flipped. They will move up shallow during the mid day once the sun gets high in the sky.
This way, they can warm up and get some extra energy from the sunlight and higher daytime temperatures.
Personally, I don’t do much winter pike fishing from the shore, but when I do, I certainly do it during the middle of the day so that the pike are more active and I stay a bit warmer.
Bank fisherman can only use as much gear as they can carry on themselves. So keep it simple and stick to the tried and true pike lures.
These big paddle tail swimbaits are currently the most popular pike lures.
They can be fished at a variety of speeds and depths, and have incredibly enticing action.
There is just something about these baits that seems to catch more and bigger pike than any other lure.
Spoon fishing for pike is one of the oldest and most time tested strategies out there.
The wobble and flash of a spoon is hard to beat, especially when fishing around rocks.
The Johnson silver minnow is the best weedless pike spoon (and one of the best pike spoons period). Having weedless lures is important when fishing from the bank so that you don’t get snagged.
In a boat, you can just drive over to the snag and get it out real quick. But when stuck to the bank, weedless lures are a life saver.
Jerkbaits have become very popular pike lures, especially in Europe where pike are the number one sport fish.
There are a couple different types of pike jerkbaits, but they all have side to side darting actions that generate huge reaction strikes from pike.
I prefer to use these jerkbaits during the fall and winter months, as they work better in a bit colder water.
What I mean by this is that you should take a few casts before you walk all the way up the the shoreline.
Make short casts 10-15 feet off the bank while you are still fairly far away.
If you walk directly up to the shoreline, you might scare away pike that are sitting in very shallow water.
By casting from a distance away, you can get your lure in front of these pike without letting them see you.
Fan Casting is when you take a cast all the way to either side. Then, you take you next cast about 15 degrees over.
Then yo continue this until you cast parallel to the bank on your other side.
Fan casting allows you to get your lure every where in front of you and cover as much water as possible.
Obviously, you don’t have as much water to fish when limited to the shore, so it is important that you be as thorough as possible.
As we discussed earlier, you have very limited space to carry fishing gear.
A nice fishing backpack will allow you to carry as many lures, nets, pliers, and other fishing accessories as possible.
You can even get a fishing backpack with some rod holders so that you are able to bring multiple rod setups.
These portable sonars are essentially fish finders that are tied on to your line and casted out.
They connect to your phone and show you depth, structure, and even fish that are under water.
I mentioned targeting ledges and underwater cover earlier. Having a portable sonar device will make it much easier to find and fish these areas.
Pike can be very difficult fish to land and handle without a net. They are big, strong, fast, and toothy.
All of these things are made even more difficult when you are stuck on the shore.
Especially because shorelines are usually covered in rocks, grass, brush, drop offs, and other obstacles that make it harder to land fish.
Just do yourself a favor and keep a landing net on you when bank fishing for pike.
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